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West from Greenwich 




2Dl)f HibcrgiDe iLitc raturc^e rtfsf 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY 



EDITED BY 

MILTON HAIGHT TURK 

PROFESSOR OP KHETORIC AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND 
LITERATURE IN HOBART COLLEGE 




j ^iRiUcraiOfPr cftgl 



v? 



•\j(»^ 



.e-' 



HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street 
Chicago : 3T8-38S Wabash Avenue 

<Si1)t fiiUctiSiDe pre??, <!Eambnt)oe 



Copyright, 1897, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. 



INTRODUCTION. 

The author of the Revolt of the Tartars has grown 
considerably in the public eye during recent years. Al- 
though he has always had his circle of admirers, and his 
works have gone through several British and American 
editions, it is not too much to say that, until the present 
academic study of his style began, the fame of the Confes- 
sions of an Opium-Eater fairly eclipsed, for most of us, all 
the rest of his numerous productions. And De Quincey got 
more than his literary reputation from this one book ; for 
years it supplied the popular notion of his character, thrust- 
ing forth into unearthly brightness those hours in his life 
whose utter impotence and misery should have been care- 
fully hidden from the public gaze. Now, of course, the 
dogging biographer has given us the truth. The Confes- 
sions was but the first of a long list of magazine contribu- 
tions, written against time for money. While De Quincey 
made his highest claims as a writer for the Confessions and 
its sequel, the Suspiria de Profundis, it is nevertheless 
clear that he regarded himself, all his life, as a great phi- 
losopher thwarted of stupendous intellectual achievements 
by disease, opium, and the necessity of laboring for daily 
bread. There are those, no doubt, that agree with him in 
this belief ; but we shall do well to stand with the judicious 
majority who find it hard to imagine De Quincey — opium, 
disease, and poverty laid aside — perfecting a great work ; 
who indeed believe that to the pressure of his necessities we 
owe it that De Quincey exists as a prose classic. 

The life of Thomas de Quincey, from 1785 to 1859, is 
divided by the appearance of his first work, in 1821, into 



IV INTRODUCTION. 

two nearly equal parts. The first of these periods is of con- 
siderable biographical interest, and contains, of course, the 
whole growth of De Quincey's character up to a time when 
it must have been fixed beyond possibility of change ; the 
second period, on the other hand, quite uneventful in itself, 
is that of great notoriety as an opium-eater, considerable 
fame as a writer, and of such prominence as he could be 
persuaded by his admirers to assume. To those whose ears 
are filled witli the strange anecdotes of the great contributor 
told by his Edinburgh friends — to those who see before 
them the weird apparition of the shriveled, withered " druid 
wight " at seventy, — the tiny frame, the elfish expression, 
the high brow, and the thin lips " talking magazine articles," 
— to such it must seem a bold undertaking to trace the 
growth of such a product out of the child of the Manchester 
merchant. Fortunate it is, therefore, that we have the aid 
at this juncture of one who delighted in exercising his an- 
alytical faculty upon such questions as this, and one who 
had peculiar opportunities for understanding it aright. De 
Quincey himself, in his Autobiogt'ajjhic Sketches, Reminis- 
cences, and Confessions, has covered nearly the whole of this 
period, and while he has, no doubt, here and there projected 
something of his later self into these Recollections, we have 
yet, it would seem, in these papers the clues to what is most 
remarkable in him. 

The salient point in the earliest history of De Quincey is 
the extent to which the influences that ordinarily mould a 
boy's character were in his case absent or unusually weak. 
His health as a little child was bad. He hardly knew his 
father, who died when he was quite young. His mother 
he has presented to us as a woman of intellect and force of 
character, but as one whose strong love for her children 
was dwarfed by her exaggerated idea of the reverence due 
to her as mother. Whatever she did for her children, it 
would seem that she never got near to them, never became, 
nor, apparently, endeavored to become, their confidante and 



INTRODUCTION. v 

friend. Deprived of this source of intimate, sympathetic 
aid, De Qnincey rejoices that liis earliest years were passed 
in rustic solitude in England, and that they were moulded 
by gentle sisters and not by rough brothers. How fortunate 
he was in this may well be questioned. At all events, these 
years as a little child in the De Quincey home in the Man- 
chester suburbs seem to have been a period of unusually 
vivid dreams, of precocious experiences of grief (after the 
death of two sisters), and of solitude and self-communion, 
if we may accept the narrative, such as no wise parents 
would permit to the healthiest child. When Thomas was 
about seven years old, however, there was precipitated into 
his life the highly finished and self-satisfied personality of 
that inspired mischief-maker, Master William de Quincey, 
aged twelve. The result for Thomas was nothing less than 
a revolution. Whereas before he might pursue at will his 
unobtrusive way to his lessons with the Reverend Samuel 
Hall, his guardian, he now moved forth as the army of 
General William de Quincey to a carefully concerted attack 
upon a little horde o£ factory boys, — advanced indeed 
under that intrepid leader with a major-generalcy held be- 
fore him as the prize of determined courage, and condem- 
nation to death as the inevitable consequence of recreancy 
to his duty. In a word, for a while he was a boy, or at 
least he was made to act like one. 

This mode of life — whether good or bad — Avas not to 
be of long duration ; Mrs. de Quincey sold Greenhay, sent 
William away to study, and settled herself at Bath, where 
Thomas, at the age of eleven, entered the Grammar School. 
Through the next twenty-five years took place the develop- 
ment which transformed a bright, rather weak and retiring 
schoolboy into an " intellectual creature," — a being who 
fairly gave up mingling and acting with the woi-ld for study 
and thought. Two processes may conveniently be distin- 
guished, working together to this end. In the first place, 
there was the ever increasing absorption in books. In the 



vi INTRODUCTION. 

Bath school De Quincey made great strides in Greek ; wit- 
ness the famous encomium of one of its masters : " That 
boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I 
could address an English one." In Winkfield and Manches- 
ter Schools (1800-2), through the Oxford years (1803-8), 
and during the Grasmere period (1809-21), the range and 
depth of De Quincey's studies were constantly increased. 
The Latin and Greek literatures were fairly searched 
through ; the English poets and dramatists became a fa- 
miliar field ; while subjects so rarely attempted at that time 
as the German literature and philosojjhy were succeeded in 
De Quincey's attention by the almost unknown science of 
Political Economy. 

Alongside this process of remarkable intellectual acquire- 
ment ran another negative process of separation from ordi- 
nary companionship. In the first place De Quincey was 
quite unable, if he ever tried, to establish a confidential 
relation with his mother. His brother William died, an- 
other brother ran away to sea, so that De Quincey as a 
youth was without intimate companionship in his own fam- 
ily. When he ran away from Manchester School, his first 
l^lan was to reach Wordsworth, whose Lyrical Ballads had 
solaced him in fits of melancholy ; and, when his timidity 
prevented this attempt, he planned a solitary tramp through 
rugged Wales. Money for this was given the truant, until 
he ceased to inform his guardians of his whereabouts. Then 
for several months he lived, by his own choice, — in Wales 
and afterwards in London — the life of a half-starved out- 
cast. In Oxford, to use his own words, he " sought solitude 
in morbid excess." Wordsworth was still his great enthu- 
siasm ; he summoned courage to send a letter to him, and 
received an answer ; and at last in 1807 he met the poet of 
the Lakes. De Quincey's settlement at Grasmere in 1809 
was his great effort to find congenial friends and a suitable 
life away from the world. Unhappily Wordsworth's per- 
sonality could not make the same agreeable impression as 



INTRODUCTION. vii 

his poetry. Nor was the fault all Wordsworth's, — the 
younger man had been taking opium occasionally since 
1804 as an antidote to pain or to melancholy, and now his 
indulgence had reached appalling proportions ; laudanum had 
become with him a regular — sometimes a sole — article of 
diet. De Quincey's marriage in 1816 to a farmer's daugh- 
ter practically terminated his intercourse with the Words- 
worths. His patrimony, used loosely while it lasted, was 
soon quite exhausted. An effort at editorship ( Westmore- 
land Gazette, 1819) was distinguished by the remarkable 
plan, solemnly proposed by De Quincey, of turning a farm- 
er's paper into a philosophical journal. Finally in 1821 
De Quincey went to London, and, having been asked for 
his opium experiences, wrote for the London Magazine the 
Confessions of an English Opinm-Eater. 

So much of the life of De Quincey we may draw from 
his autobiographic writings, where, it need hardly be said, 
every admirer of De Quincey and every lover of good liter- 
ature should trace the author's career for himself. The 
rest of his life — in London, in Edinburgh, and Lasswade — 
was given up, as has been said, to pursuing his calling as a 
writer for magazines, and his avocation as a converser of 
much curious information and still more eloquent language ; 
his last years were occupied by a heroic struggle to provide 
in time " copy " for the Edinburgh edition of his works. 
His habits were now fixed : he throughout his life continued 
drinking laudanum, twice after 1821 reaching enormous 
amounts ; he turned night into day ; executed frequent mys- 
terious disappearances ; triumphed over all rules of dress, 
— occasionally receiving visits, clad in an overcoat and 
a little underwear ; he snowed himself up with papers and 
books in one lodging, then turned the key, departed, and 
hired another ; he lavished money upon worthless beggars 
and sometimes forgot his creditors ; in a woi'd, he remained 
in practical matters a child to the age of seventy-four. 

De Quincey's writings, with which we have now to do, 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

have been divided by the author himself into three groups. 
First he mentions that class which " proposes primarily to 
amuse the reader ; but which, in doing so, may or may not 
happen occasionally to reach a higher station, at which the 
amusement passes into an impassioned interest : " here would 
fall the Autobiograjihic Sketches and the Reminiscences. 
Into the second class are put " those papers which address 
themselves purely to the understanding as an insulated 
faculty ; or do so primarily : " these are called in general 
Essays, and include — to follow Professor Masson's latest 
classification — (a) Biographies, such as Shakespeare, or 
Richard Bentley ; (b) Historical Essays, like The Ca'sars, 
and this Revolt of the Tartars ; (c) Speculative and Theo- 
logical Essays ; (d) Essays in Political Economy and Poli- 
tics ; (e) Papers of Literaiy Theory and Criticism, such as 
the famous essays on Rhetoric, Style, and Conversation, and 
the brilliant criticism " On the Knocking at the Gate in 
Macbeth." In the third class, " and, in virtue of their aim, 
as a far higher class of compositions," De Quincey ranks 
" the Confessions of an Opium-Eater, and also (but more 
emphatically) the Suspiria de Profundis." " On these," 
says their author, " as modes of impassioned [i. e. imagina- 
tive] prose ranging under no precedents that I am aware 
of in literature, it is much more difficult to speak justly, 
whether in a hostile or a friendly character." 

^ In touching with brief comments these great divisions of 
De Quincey 's authorship, we shall do well to begin with his 
second class. Nine tenths of his work was intended, like 
all magazine articles, to amuse and instruct. It was the 
product of a mind of marvelous analytical power ; a mind 
constitutionally apt to discover hidden analogies, and to 
elaborate, with great rapidity and by the use of an amazing 
store of knowledge, new and sometimes startling theories ; 
it was the product of such a mind bent strongly from very 
infancy upon intellectual pursuits, fed and nourished in soli- 
tude into an intellectual engine of astonishing power. Such 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

and so great a commendation may be bestowed upon De 
Quincey with little fear of any man's demur. And yet, for 
all that, he is open in his intellectual woi'k to one or two 
serious limitations, — limitations due in part to the very com- 
pleteness of his absorption in intellectual pursuits. He had 
so little ordinary intercoui'se with the world that his judg- 
ments in history and literature are often strangely tinged or 
warped. He plumes himself — a certain childish vanity is 
one of his weaknesses — especially upon his early discovery 
of Wordsworth ; and with right ; yet many of his later crit- 
icisms, like his relegation of Goethe to an early obscurity, 
are hopelessly weak. In all matters of speculation, too, he 
is by no means free from the love of the new theory or 
opinion for its novelty rather than for its soundness. Fur- 
thermore, he is, with great pretense of exactness, often quite 
careless of accuracy, and sometimes — be it said in the gen- 
tlest way — negligent of facts that must have beeu known 
to him. The truth is, probably, that he tended continually, 
in dealing with fact, to pass over into the sphere of imagina- 
tive creation in which he was quite at home ; this Revolt 
of the Tartars exhibits this process in an advanced stage. 

The Autobiographic Sketches, therefore, and writings of 
their class, which, according to De Quincey's own statements, 
occupy a middle position, ranging from the intellectual to 
the imaginative at will, must necessarily be treated with 
care as records of events. Their basis, however, seems to 
be solid fact ; and, after all, they have their chief value as 
records of emotions : they are De Quincey's " Sentimental 
Journey." Here we must look, therefore, for his best pathos ; 
and here again we shall find, in place of the elephantine 
playfulness which he generally exhibits for wit, some food 
for hearty laughter. But there is a third part of our author's 
work — small in amount, but great in power — which, if it 
does not, as he says, range under any precedent in literature, 
still belongs to a rare type of prose. In these writings he 
has — to adopt Professor Genung's expression — " shaped 



X INTRODUCTION. 

his conceptions in the fancy rather than in the severity of 
logic." In this kind of composition, at once harmonious 
and picturesque, we see the Opium-Eater in his moments of 
exaltation. The dreaming faculty which was his from child- 
hood, and which was stimulated by opium, supplies him with 
the gorgeous visions about which he weaves the transparent 
garment of brilliant language. Spite of all his claims as 
investigator, critic, or philosopher, it is in these gorgeous 
palaces of words that De Quincey is really at home. 

The study of De Quincey's style can best be carried on 
by the use of Minto's extensive account of it in his Manual 
of English Prose Literature, although any good Rhetoric 
furnishes the necessary method. The standard Life of De 
Quincey is that of H. A. Page (A. H. Japp) ; but Masson's 
briefer De Quincey in the English Men of Letters is a later 
and better biography ; Hogg's De Quincey and his Friends 
contains much interesting matter. The tirst collected edi- 
tion of De Quincey's writings was made in America by 
Mr. Fields and has been the basis of all others. It is espe- 
cially valuable by reason of its completeness and its full 
and minute index. It is published in twelve volumes by 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The most recent edition is that 
of Professor Masson ; and by far the most elaborate sepa- 
rate edition of the Revolt of the Tartars is that of Dr. C. 
S. Baldwin : to both these scholars editors of this essay are 
likely, for some time to come, to owe a considerable debt. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, 1770-1859. 



1785. De Quincey born in 
Manchester, August 15 ; 
taken to "The Farm" 
in the suburbs. 



1792. Greenhay : days with 
Wm. de Quincey and 
of lessons from Rev. S. 
Hall. 



1796. Bath Grammar 
School. 



1800. Winkfield School. 
Visit to Ireland with 
Lord Westport ; De Quin- 
cey sees last session of 
Irish Parliament. Man- 
chester Grammar School. 

1802. De Quincey runs 
away from school. Wan- 
derings in Wales and 
sojourn in London. 



1770. Wordsworth born 
Goldsmith, The Deserted 
Village. 

1771. Scott born. 



1772. Coleridge born. 

1774. Burke, Speech on 
American Taxation. 

1775. Johnson, Taxation 
no Tyranny. Burke, 
Speech on Conciliation 
with America. Lamb 
born. 

1778. Frances Burney, 

Evelina. 
1779, 1781. Johnson, Liv%s 

of the Poets. 
1782. Cowper, Poems. 



1785. Cowper, The Task, 
John Gilpin, etc. 

1786. Burns, Poems. Kil- 
marnock. 

1788. Byron born. 



1790. Burke, Reflections 
on the Revolution in 
France. 

1792. Shelley bom. 



1795. Keats and Carlyle 
born. 



1798. Wordsworth and 
Coleridge, Lyrical Bal- 
lads. 

1800. Macau lay born. 
Maria Edge worth. Castle 
Rackrent. 



1770. Lord North's Min- 
istry in England. Tea 
Tax for America retained. 

1771. Flight of the Torgod 
from Russian to Chinese 
Territory. 



1775. Opening of the 
American Revolution. 

1776. Declaration of In- 
dependence. 



1781. Surrender of Com- 
wallis. 

1783. Acknowledgment of 
American Independence. 



1788. United States Con- 
stitution ratified. 

1789. Outbreak of the 
French Revolution. 
Washington President of 
the United States, 



1797. John Adams Presi- 
dent. 

1798. Napoleon in Egypt ; 
Battle of the Nile. 

1800. Union of Great Brit- 
ain and Ireland. 

1801 . Jefferson President. 



Xll 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



1803. Oxtoid : Worcester 
College. Currespondeuce 
with Wordsworth. 

1804. Meeting with Lamb 
— and with opium. 



1807. Meeting with Cole- 
ridge and afterwards with 
Wordsworth. 

1808-9. Loudon : slight law 
studies. De Quincey sees 
Wordsworth's Couven- 
tion of Cintra pamphlet 
through the press. 

1809. Settlement in Gras- 
mere. Intercourse with 
the Wordsworths and 
friendship with John 
Wilson. 



1804. Bergmann, Noma- 
dische Streifereien unter 
den Kalmiiken in den 
Jahren 1802 and 1803. 
Riga. (Rambles among 
the Kalmucks in the 
years 1802 and 1803.) 

1805. Scott, Lay of the 
Last Minstrel. 



1816. Married Margaret 
Simpson. 

1819. Editor of the West- 
moreland Gazette. 



1821. London: Confes- 
sions of an English 
Opi^im - Eater ; Herder, 
Richter, with Analects 
(London Magazine). 

1822-24. Letttrs to a Young 
Man w/iose Ediication 
has been Neglected ; 
Hosicrticians and Free- 
masons; etc. (London 
Magazine). 



1826-27. Lessing, with 
Translation from Loo- 
coon (Blackwood's Edin- 
burgh Magazine. 



1810. Scott, Lady of the 
Lake. 

1811. Jane Austen, Sense 
and Sensibility. 

1812. Byron, First two 
Cantos oi Childe Harold. 

1814. Scott, Waverley. 
Wordsworth, The Excur- 
sion. 

1815. Wordsworth , Wliite 
Doe of Rylstone. 

1810. Shelley, Alastor. 

1818. Keats, Endymion. 

1819. Byron, First two 
Cantos of Don Juan. 
Irving, The Sketch Book. 

1820. Keats, Lamia, etc. 
Shelley, Prometheus Un- 
bound. 



1822. Lamb, Essays of 
Elia (London Magazine). 



1825. Macaulay, Essay on 
Milton (Edinburgh Re- 
view). 



1804, Napoleon Emperor. 



1805. Napoleon's projected 
descent upon England. 
Battle of Trafalgar. 



Convention of Cin- 



1809. Madison President. 



1811. Prince George Re- 
gent of England. 

1812-14. War between 
England and the U. S. 

1814. Napoleon on Elba. 



1815. Waterloo. 

1817. Monroe President. 



1820. George IV. King of 
England. 



1825. J. Q. Adams Presi- 
dent. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



Xlll 



1827. Murder considered 
as one of the Fine Arts 
(Blackwood's). 

1828-33. Edinburgh. Toi- 
lette of a Hebrew Lady, 
Richard Bentley, Dr. 
Parr, The Ctesars, Char- 
lemagne, etc. (Black- 
wood's). 

1832. Klosterheim, a me- 
diaeval romance. Black- 
wood. Edinburgh. 



1834^0. Autobiographic 
Sketches and lieminis- 
ences. (Talt's Edinburgh 
Magazine). 

1837. Death of Mrs. de 
Qiiincey. Shakespeare, 
Ooe/he, Pope (Encyclo- 
pifcdia Britannica. Re- 
volt OF THE Tartars 
(Blackwood's). 

1838. Lodgings in Lothian 
Street. 

1840. Cottage at Lass wade. 

1841-3. Visits to Glas- 
gow. 

1840-5. The Essenes, Style, 
Rhetoric, Homer and the 
Homeridae, Cicero, 
Coleridge and Opium- 
Eating (Blackwood's). 

1844. Logic of Political 
Economy. Blackwood. 
Edinburgh. 

184.5-G. Notes on Literary 
Portraits: Godicin, 
Shelley, Keats, etc. ; 
System of the Heavens 
(Tait's). Suspiria de 
Profiindis, a Sequel to 
the Confessions (Black- 
wood's). 

1847. Lodgings in Glas- 
gow ; work on the new 
Nortli British Daily Mail. 
Joan of Arc, The Span- 
ish Military Nun, Protes- 
tantism, etc. (Tait's). 

1848-59. Lodgings in Lo- 
thian Street again. 

1849. The English Mail- 
Coach (Blackwood's). 

1850. Sir Wm. Hamilton, 
etc. (Hogg's Instructor). 

1S51-.5. Ticknor and 
Fields' American Edi- 
tion of De Quincey's 
Works. Boston. 



1827. Alfred and Charles 
Tennyson, Poems. Poe, 
Tamerlane and other 
Poems. 



1830. Tennyson, Poems, 
chiefly Lyrical. 



1833-34. Carlyle, Sartor 
Resartus. Browning, 

Pauline. 



183G-37. Dickens, Pick- 
wick Papers. 

1837. Carlyle, French 
Revolution. Hawthorne, 
Twice-Told Tales. 



1S40. Poe, Tales. 

1841. Carlyle, Heroes and 
Hero-Worship. Emer- 
son, Essays (First Series). 

1843. Macaulay, Essays. 
Ruskin, Modem Paint- 
ers I. 



1847. Thackeray, Vanity 
Fair. Longfellow, Evan- 
geline. 



1848. Macaulay, History 
of England, Vols. I., II. 



1850. Tennyson, In Memo- 
riam. Hawthorne, The 
Scarlet Letter. 



1829. Jackson President, 

1830. William IV. King. 



1832. Reform Bill passed 
in England. 

1833. Abolition of Slavery 
in British colonies. 



1837. Van Buren Presi- 
dent. Victoria Queen. 



1841. Harrison President. 
Tyler President. 



1845. Polk President. 
1845-8. Mexican War. 



1849. Taylor President. 
California Gold Fever. 

1850. Fillmore President. 



XIV 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



1853-9. Selections Grave 
and Gay, from Writings 
by T. de Quincey (De 
Quincey editor ; J. Hogg 
publisher). Edinburgli. 

1857. Visit to Mrs. Craig 
in Ireland. 

1859. Death, December 8, 
at 42 Lothian Street, 
Edinburgh. 



1856. Macaulay, Lives of 
Johnson and Goldsmith 
(Encyclopaedia Britanni- 
ca). 



1859. George Eliot, Adam 
Bade. 



1853. Pierce President. 

1854. Crimean War. 



1857. Buchanan President. 



1859. John Brown's raid 
at Harper's Ferry. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

The Revolt of the Tartars was published in Blackwood's Edin- 
burgh Magazine for July, 1837 (volume xlii. page 89). It was 
reprinted by Messrs. Tickuor and Fields in their edition of De 
Quincey's works under the title Flight of a Tartar Tribe as the 
first of the Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers. It was repub- 
lished by De Quineey with very slight verbal changes in 1854 
in the fourth volume of Selections Grave and Gay, whence our 
present text comes. This can hardly be called one of the most 
popular of De Quincey's writings, though recently Professor 
Masson distinguished it by a place in his two volumes of De 
Quineey Essays. Yet perhaps no other piece shows so many 
sides of its author's genius. For there is no better-told story 
from De Quincey's pen ; in certain scenes, too, it rises well-nigh 
to the imaginative heights of The English Mail-Coach • and 
again, though not itself, in reality, a work of erudition, it con- 
tains sufficient testimony to the learning of its writer, and indeed 
maintains throughout, albeit insecurely, the atmosphere of his- 
torical research belonging with better right to other essays. 

There caii be little doubt that this work is drawn in about 
equal measure from two very different sources : First, most of 
the facts come from the text and notes of Bergmann's account of 
the Torgod migration in his Nomadische Streifereien unter den 
Kalmiiken in den Jahren 1802 and 1803, published at Riga in 
1804. Secondly, the rest of the facts and all the picturesque 
effects come from the imagination of the author. The follow- 
ing, which presents the ordinary historian's impressions of this 
event, should be carefully noted by the student. 

" The position of the Torgod at this time [when Ubasha 
became Khan], hemmed in as they were between the Russians 
and Turks, was rapidly becoming unbearable, and the question 
of migrating ' bag and baggage ' was very generally mooted. 
In the war between his two powerful neighbours in 1769 and 
1770, Ubasha gave valuable assistance to the Russians. His 



2 PREFATORY NOTE. 

troops took part in the siege of Otehakoff, and gained a decided 
victory on the Kalans. Flushed with these successes, he was in 
no mood to listen patiently to the taunts of the governor of 
Astrakhan, who likened him to a 'bear fastened to a chain,' 
and he made up his mind to break away once and for all from a 
tutelage which was as galling as it was oppressive. He deter- 
mined, therefore, to migrate eastward with his people, and on 
the 5th of January, 1771, he began his march with 70,000 fami- 
lies. In vain the Russians attempted to recall the fugitives, who, 
in spite of infinite hardships, after a journey of eight months 
reached the province of Hi, where they were welcomed by the 
Chinese authorities. Food for a year's consumption was supplied 
to each family ; and land, money, and cattle were freely distrib- 
uted. How many lost their lives on the toilsome march it is 
impossible to say, but it is believed that 300,000 persons survived 
to receive the hospitality of the Chinese. . . • Such another 
migration occurred between four and five thousand years ago, 
when the Chinese crossed from western Asia into their pres- 
ent empire ; such, again, was the movement which carried the 
Osmanli Turks from north-eastern Asia into Asia-Minor, and 
eventually across the Bosphorus. . . . The Chinese, flattered 
by the compliment implied by the transference of allegiance, set- 
tled them [the Torgod] on lands in the province of Hi, in the 
neighborhood of the Altai Mountains, and to the west of the des- 
ert of Gobi. But the price they were made to pay for this liber- 
ality was absorption in the Chinese empire." — R. K. Douglas, 
in Encyclopcedia Britannica. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE.* 



There is no great event in modern history, or, per- 
haps it may be said more broadly, none in all history, 
from its earliest i-ecords, less generally known, or more 
striking to the imagination, than the flight eastwards 
of a principal Tartar ^ nation across the boundless 
steppes of Asia in the latter half of the last century. 
The terminus a quo ^ of this flight and the terminus ad 
quern are equally magnificent ; the mightiest of Chris- 

1 This title, introduced in the first (American) edition of De 
Quincey's works, seems to have superseded in this country De 
Quincey's lieading : Revolt of the Tartars, or, Flight of the 
Kalmuck Khan and his People fi'om the Russian Territories to 
the Frontiers of China. 

'^ De Quincey applies the name Tartar inaccurately, though 
popularly, it appears, to this tribe. The Tartars or Tatars are 
really a Turkish race ; they were carried westwiird in the great 
Mongolian raids of conquest, but are in blood still only slightly 
Mongol. Kalmuck is the popular European name for West 
Mongols ; it is used by the people themselves only in tlie Volga 
district. Torgod (Torgote) is the true name of those of whom 
De Quincey writes. This Torgod was the result of an ancient 
secession from the Kerait branch of the Mongols, followed by 
an eventual encampment — apparently about 1672, though De 
Quincey's date, 1G16, has some support — in the district bor- 
dered by the lower Don, lower Ural or Jaik, Caspian and Cau- 
casus. The lower Volga was thus well in the midst of the Tor- 
god camping-grounds : from the east bank of that stream the 
migration took place ; and it proceeded around the northern end 
of the Caspian, thence north of the Aral Sea and so to Lake 
Balkhash near the Desert of Gobi. 

3 Note De Quincey's fondness for learned phrases. 



4 DE QUINCE Y. 

tian thrones being the one, the mightiest of Pagan the 
other. And the grandeur of these two terminal ob- 
jects is harmoniously supported by the romantic cir- 
cumstances of the flight.^ In the abruptness of its 
commencement, and the fierce velocity of its execu- 
tion, we read an expression of the wild barbaric char- 
acter of those who conducted the movement. In the 
unity of purpose connecting this myriad of wills, and 
in the blind but unerring aim at a mark so remote, 
there is something which recalls to the mind those 
almighty instincts that propel the migrations of the 
swallow and the leeming, or the life-withering marches 
of the locust. Then, again, in the gloomy vengeance 
of Russia and her vast artillery, which hung upon 
the rear and the skirts of the fugitive vassals, we are 
reminded of Miltonic ^ images — such, for instance, 
as that of the solitary hand pursuing through desert 
spaces and through ancient chaos a rebellious host, 
and overtaking with volleying thunders those who 
believed themselves already within the security of 
darkness and of distance. 

1 shall have occasion, farther on, to compare this 
event with other great national catastrophes as to the 
magnitude of the suffering. But it may also challenge 
a comparison with similar events under another rela- 
tion, viz., as to its dramatic capabilities. Few cases, 
perhaps, in romance or history, can sustain a close 
collation with this as to the complexity of its separate 
interests. The great outline of the enterprise, taken 
in connexion with the operative motives, hidden or 

^ Here and in this whole paragraph we have the impressions 
made upon De Quincey by Bergmann's account of this event — 
impressions to which we owe this paper. De Quincey seizes the 
dramatic capacities of the story, and is therefore a literary 
creator here, rather than an historian. 

2 Why does " jMiltonic " mean " sublime " ? 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 5 

avowed, and the religious sanctions under which it 
was pursued, give to the case a triple character : 1st, 
that of a conspiracy} with as close a unity in the 
incidents, and as much of a personal interest in the 
moving characters, with fine dramatic contrasts, as 
belongs to " Venice Preserved," ^ or to the " Fiesco " ^ 
of Schiller; 2dly, that of a great military expedition., 
offering the same romantic features of vast distances 
to be traversed, vast reverses to be sustained, untried 
routes, enemies obscurely ascertained, and hardships 
too vaguely prefigured, which mark the Egyptian 
expedition of Cambyses ^ — which mark the anabasis 
of the younger Cyrus,* and the subsequent retreat of 
the ten thousand. — which mark the Parthian expedi- 
tions of the Romans, especially those of Crassus ^ and 
tTulian ® — or (as more disastrous than any of them, 

' Bergmann introduced this element with the character of 
Zebek-Dorchi (compare the prefatory note) ; and De Quiucey 
adds many dramatic details to Bergmann's account. 

- Otway's Venice Preserved, or, A Plot Discovered, printed in 
1682, was the last important acting tragedy written for the Eng- 
lish stage ; the Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa (1783) was one of 
Schiller's earlier tragedies. 

3 Cambyses, King of Persia from 529 to 522 b. c, conquered 
Egypt ; but his armies, sent westward and southward for fur- 
ther conquests, perished in the Lybian deserts. 

^ Cyrus the Younger, Persian Governor of Asia Minor, 
marched a body of Greek mercenaries out of Asia Minor to 
Cunaxa, near Babylon, to dethrone his brother, Artaxerxes II., 
King of Persia (400 B. c). Cyi'us fell in battle ; and the Greeks 
were then brought back through the greatest hardships by Xen- 
ophon to the Black Sea. 

'' Marcus Crassus, elected Roman Consul with Pompey in 55 
B. c, undertook in 53 an expedition against the savage Parthi- 
ans ; he v/as hopelessly defeated at Carrhae in Mesopotomia, 
and thereafter treacherously slain. 

" Julian the Apostate, Roman Emperor 361-3G3, was killed 
during an expedition against the Parthians. 



6 DE QUINCE Y. 

and, in point of space as well as in amount of forces, 
more extensive) the Russian anabasis ^ and katabasis ^ 
of Napoleon ; 3dly, that of a religious Exodus, author- 
ised by an oracle venerated throughout many nations 
of Asia, — an Exodus, therefore, in so far resembling 
the great Scriptural Exodus of the Israelites, under 
Moses and Joshua, as well as in the very peculiar dis- 
tinction of carrying along with them ^ their entire fam- 
ilies, women, children, slaves, their herds of cattle and 
of sheep, their horses and their camels. 

This triple character of the enterprise naturally in- 
vests it with a more comprehensive interest. But the 
dramatic interest^ which I have ascribed to it, or its 
fitness for a stage representation, depends partly upon 
the marked variety and the strength of the personal 
agencies concerned, and partly upon the succession of 
scenical situations. Even the ste'p'pes, the camels, the 
tents, the snowy and the sandy deserts, are not beyond 
the scale of our modern representative powers, as often 
called into action in the theatres both of'* Paris and 
London ; and the series of situations unfolded, — be- 
ginning with the general conflagration on the Wolga ^ 
— passing thence to the disastrous scenes of the flight 
(as it literally was in its commencement) — to the 
Tartar siege of the Russian fortress Koulagina ^ — the 

^ Consult a Greek dictionary or the Century (catabasis). In 
1812 Napoleon entered Russia with an immense array ; he 
reached Moscow, but found the city deserted and, almost im- 
mediately, in flames. Deprived thus of shelter and supplies, he 
was forced to retreat ; and his army reached home only after 
the loss, chiefly by cold and famine, of 300,000 men. 

2 No antecedent for this pronoun. 

2 This paragraph unrolls the details in rapid review. 

4 Should be " of both." 

^ Volga : De Quineey follows Bergmann's German spelling. 

^ No such fortress is given on modern maps. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 7 

bloody engagement with the Cossacks in the mountain 
j)asses at Ouchim — the surprisal by the Bashkirs, and 
the advanced posts of the Russian army at Torgau — 
the private conspiracy at this point against the Khan 
— the long succession of running fights — the part- 
ing massacres at the Lake of Tengis under the eyes 
of the Chinese — and, finally, the tragical retribution 
to Zebek-Dorchi at the hunting lodge of the Chi- 
nese Emperor ; — all these situations communicate a 
scenical animation to the wild romance, if treated 
dramatically ; whilst a higher and a philosophic in- 
terest belongs to it as a case of authentic history, 
commemorating a great revolution for good and for 
evil in the fortunes of a whole peoj^le — ^a people semi- 
barbarous, but simple hearted, and of ancient descent. 

On the 21st of January, 1761, the young Prince 
Oubacha ^ assumed the sceptre of the Kalmucks upon 
the death of his father. Some part of the power at- 
tached to this dignit}^ he had already wielded since his 
fourteenth year, in quality of Vice-Khan, by the ex- 
press appointment and with the avowed support of the 
Russian Government. He was now about eighteen 
years of age, amiable in his personal character, and 
not without titles to respect in his public character as 
a sovereign prince. In times more peaceable, and 
amongst a people more entirely civilised, or more 
humanised by religion, it is even probable that he 
might have discharged his high duties with consider- 

1 De Quincey's Oubacha and Zebek are characters in dramatic 
narrative, not in history. For the historical Ubasha see the pre- 
fatory note ; Zebek can hardly be said to exist in history. — 
Compare the dignified "assumed the sceptre" with p. 22, 
uote 1. 



8 DE QUINCE Y. 

able distinction. But his lot was thrown upon stormy 
times, and a most difficult crisis amongst tribes whose 
native ferocity was exasperated by debasing forms 
of superstition, and by a nationality ^ as well as an 
inflated conceit of their own merit absolutely unpar- 
alleled, whilst the circumstances of their hard and 
trying position under the jealous sti7'veillance of an 
irresistible lord paramount,^ in the person of the Rus- 
sian Czar, gave a fiercer edge to the natural unamia- 
bleness of the Kalmuck disposition, and irritated its 
gloomier qualities into action under the restless im- 
pulses of suspicion and permanent distrust. No prince 
could hope for a cordial allegiance from his* subjects 
or a peaceful reign under the cii'cumstances of the 
case ; for the dilemma ^ in which a Kalmuck ruler 
stood at present was of this nature : tvanting the sanc- 
tion and support of the Czar, he was inevitably too 
weak from without to command confidence from his 
subjects, or resistance to his competitors ; on the other 
hand, with this kind of support, and deriving his title 
in any degree from the favour of the Imperial Court, 
he became almost in that extent an object of hatred at 
home, and within the whole compass of his own terri- 
tory. He was at once an object of hatred for the past, 
being a living monument of national independence 
ignominiously surrendered, and an object of jealousy 
for the future, as one who had already advertised him- 
self to be a fitting tool for the ultimate purposes 

^ That is, nationalism ; a devotion, unreasoning and violent, 
to their own race and nation ; thus connected with " inflated 
conceit " as well as " superstition." 

^ Sovereign lord, i. e., one that had under him many lesser 
lords, who owed him service in return for their lands. 

^ Note De Quincey's performance of the congenial task of 
analyzing and defining Oubacha's position. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 9 

(whatsoever those might prove to be) of the Russian 
Court. Coming himself to the Kalmuck sceptre under 
the heaviest weight of prejudice from the unfortunate 
circumstances of his position, it might have been ex- 
pected that Oubacha would have been pre-eminently 
an object of detestation ; for, besides his known de- 
pendence upon the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, the 
direct line of succession had been set aside, and the 
principle of inheritance violently suspended, in favour 
of his own fatlier, so recently as nineteen years before 
the era of his own accession, consequently within the 
lively remembrance of the existing generation. He 
therefore, almost equally with his father, stood within 
the full current of the national prejudices, and might 
have anticipated the most pointed hostility. But it 
was not so : such are the caprices in human affairs 
that he was even, in a moderate sense, popular — 
a benefit which wore the more cheering aspect, and 
the promises of permanence, inasmuch as he owed it 
exclusively to his personal qualities of kindness and 
affability, as well as to the beneficence of his govern- 
ment. On the other hand, to balance this unlooked- 
for prosperity at the outset of his reign, he met with 
a rival in popular favovir — almost a competitor — in 
the person of Zebek-Dorchi, a prince with consider- 
able pretensions to the throne, and perhaps, it might 
be said, with equal pretensions. Zebek-Dorchi was a 
direct descendant of the same royal house as himself, 
through a different branch. On public grounds, his 
claim stood, perhaps, on a footing equally good with 
that of Oubacha, whilst his personal qualities, even in 
those aspects which seemed to a philosophical observer 
most odious and repulsive, promised the most effectual 
aid to the dark purposes of an intriguer or a conspira- 



10 DE QUINCEY. 

tor, and were generally fitted to win a popular suj)port 
precisely in those points where Oubacha was most de- 
fective. He was much superior in external appearance 
to his rival on the throne, and so far better qualified 
to win the good opinion of a semi-barbarous people ; 
whilst his dark intellectual qualities of Machiavelian ^ 
dissimulation, profound hypocrisy, and perfidy which 
knew no touch of remorse, were admirably calcidated 
to sustain any ground which he might win from the 
simple-hearted people with whom he had to deal, and 
from the frank carelessness of his unconscious com- 
petitor. 

At the very outset of his treachei'ous career, Zebek- 
Dorchi was sagacious enough to perceive that nothing 
could be gained by open declaration of hostility to the 
reigning prince : the choice had been a deliberate act 
on the part of Russia, and Elizabeth Petrowna ^ was 
not the person to recall her own favours with levity 
or upon slight grounds. Openly, therefore, to have 
declared his enmity towards his relative on the throne 
could have had no effect but that of arming suspicions 
against his own ulterior purposes in a quarter where 
it was most essential to his interest that, for the pres- 
ent, all suspicion should be hoodwinked.^ Accord- 
ingly, after much meditation, the course he took for 
opening his snares was this : — He raised a rumour 
that his own life was in danger from the plots of sev- 
eral Saissang (that is, Kalmuck nobles), who were 
leagued together, under an oath, to assassinate him ; 
and immediately after, assuming a well-counterfeited 

1 What is the ground for the accepted meaning of this word ? 
^ Daughter of Peter the Great, and Empress of Russia from 
1741 to 1762. 

3 Compare the common use of this word referring to a. .person. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 11 

alarm, he fled to Tcherkask,^ followed by sixty-five 
tents. 2 From this place he kept up a correspondence 
with the Imperial Court; and, by way of soliciting ^ 
his cause more effectually, he soon repaired in person 
to St. Petersburg. Once admitted to personal con- 
ferences with the cabinet, he found no difficulty in 
winning over the Russian counsels to a concurrence 
with some of his political views, and thus covertly 
introducing the point of that wedge which was finally 
to accomplish his purposes. In particular, he per- 
suaded the Russian government to make a very im- 
portant alteration in the constitution of the Kalmuck 
State Council, which in effect reorganised the whole 
political condition of the state, and disturbed the bal- 
ance of power as previously adjusted. Of this coun- 
cil — in the Kalmuck language called Sarga — there 
were eight members, called Sargatchi ; and hitherto 
it had been the custom that these eight members 
should be entirely subordinate to the Khan ; holding, 
in fact, the ministerial character of secretaries and 
assistants, but in no respect ranking as co-ordinate 
authorities. That had produced some inconveniences 
in former reigns ; and it was easy for Zebek-Dorchi 
to point the jealousy of the Russian Court to others 
more serious which might arise in future circum- 
stances of war or other contingencies. It was re- 
solved, therefore, to place the Sargatchi henceforwards 
on a footing of perfect independence, and therefoi'e 
(as regarded responsibility) on a footing of equality 
with the Khan. Their independence, however, had 

^ On the lower Don. 

2 That is, families. What is the figure ? 

3 How does this use of " solicit " differ from that common 
now-a-days ? 



12 DE QUINCEY. 

respect only to their own sovereign ; for towards Rus- 
sia they were placed in a new attitude of direct duty 
and accountability by the creation in their favour of 
small pensions (300 roubles a year) which, however, 
to a Kalmuck of that day were more considerable 
than might be supposed, and had a farther value as 
marks of honorary distinction emanating from a great 
empress. Thus far the purposes of Zebek-Dorchi were 
served effectually for the moment : but, apparently, it 
was only for the moment ; since, in the further devel- 
opment of his plots, this very dependency upon Rus- 
sian influence would be the most serious obstacle in 
his way. There was, however, another point carried 
which outweighed all inferior considerations, as it 
gave him a power of setting aside discretionally what- 
soever should arise to disturb his plots : he was him- 
self appointed President and Controller of the Sar- 
gatchi. The Russian Court had been aware of his 
high pretensions by birth, and hoped by this promo- 
tion to satisfy the ambition which, in some degree, 
was acknowledged to be a reasonable passion for any 
man occupying his situation. 

Having thus completely blindfolded the cabinet of 
Russia, Zebek-Dorchi proceeded in his new character 
to fulfil his political mission with the Khan of the 
Kalmucks. So artfully did he prepare the road for 
his favourable reception at the court of this prince 
that he was at once and universally welcomed as a 
benefactor. The pensions of the councillors were so 
much additional wealth poured into the Tartar ex- 
chequer ; as to the ties of dependency thus created, 
experience had not yet enlightened these simple tribes 
as to that result. And that he himself should be the 
chief of these mercenary coimcillors was so far from 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR. TRIBE. 13 

being charged upon Zebek as any offence or any 
ground of suspicion, that his relative the Khan re- 
turned him hearty thanks for his services, under the 
belief that he could have accepted this appointment 
only with a view to keep out other and more unwel- 
come pretenders, who woidd not have had the same 
motives of consanguinity or friendship for executing 
its duties in a spirit of kindness to the Kalmucks. 
The first use which he made of his new functions 
about the Khan's person was to attack the Court of 
Russia, by a romantic villainy not easily to be cred- 
ited, for those very acts of interference with the 
council which he himself had prompted. This was 
a dangerous step : but it was indispensable to his 
farther advance upon the gloomy path which he had 
traced out for himself. A triple vengeance was what 
he meditated : 1, upon the Russian cabinet, for hav- 
ing undervalued his own pretensions to the throne ; 
2, upon his amiable rival, for having supplanted him ; 
and, 3, upon all those of the nobility who had mani- 
fested their sense of his weakness by their neglect, or 
their sense of his perfidious character by their sus- 
picions. Here was a colossal outline of wickedness ; 
and by one in his situation, feeble (as it might seem) 
for the accomplishment of its humblest parts, how 
was the total edifice to be reared in its comprehen- 
sive grandeur? He, a worm as he was, could he 
venture to assail the mighty behemoth ^ of Muscovy ,2 
the potentate who counted three hundred languages 
around the footsteps of his throne, and from whose 

1 Job xl. 15. 

2 This name for the older, smaller Russia comes from the city 
Moscow, which towards 1300 came to be the centre of Russian 
power. 



14 DE QUINCEY. 

" lion ramp " ^ recoiled alike " baptized and infidel " ^ 
— Christendom on the one side, strong by her intellect 
and her organisation, and the " Barbaric East " on 
the other, with her unnumbered numbers?^ The 
match was a monstrous one ; but in its very mon- 
strosity there lay this germ of encouragement, that 
it could not be suspected. The very hopelessness of 
the scheme grounded his hope, and he resolved to 
execute a vengeance which should involve, as it were, 
in the unity of a well-laid tragic fable,* all whom he 
judged to be his enemies. That vengeance lay in de- 
taching fi-om the Russian Empire the whole Kalmuck 
nation, and breaking up that system of intercourse 
which had thus far been beneficial to both. This last 
was a consideration which moved him but little. True 
it was, that Russia to the Kalmucks had secured lands 
and extensive pasturage ; true it was, that the Kal- 
mucks reciprocally to Russia had furnished a powerful 
cavalry. But the latter loss would be part of his tri- 
umph, and the former might be more than compen- 
sated in other climates under other sovereigns. Here 
was a scheme which, in its final accomplishment, would 
avenge him bitterly on the Czarina, and in the course 
of its accomplishment might furnish him with ample 
occasions for removing his other enemies. It may be 
readily supposed, indeed, that he who could deliber- 
ately raise his eyes to the Russian autocrat as an an- 

^ From Milton's Samson Agonistes, line 139. 

2 Paradise Lost, book i. line 582, has " baptized or infidel." 
De Quincey, as usual, quotes from memory. 

^ Note the development of this eloquent description of Zebek's 
plot, to its culmination in these striking phrases. 

■* That is, fabula, story, plot. The reference is particularly 
to the dramatic law that all the characters in a play must be 
involved in one action. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 15 

tagonist in single clnel with himself was not likely to 
feel much anxiety about Kalmuck enemies of whatever 
rank. He took his resolution, therefore, sternly and 
irrevocably to effect this astonishing translation of an 
ancient people across the pathless deserts of Central 
Asia, intersected continually by rapid rivers, rarely 
furnished with bridges, and of which the fords were 
known only to those who might think it for their in- 
terest to conceal them, through many nations inhos- 
pitable or hostile ; frost and snow aroimd them (from 
the necessity of commencing their flight in the win- 
ter), famine in their front, and the sabre, or even the 
artillery of an offended and mighty empress, hanging 
upon their rear for thousands of miles. But what was 
to be their final mark — the port of shelter after so 
fearful a course of wandering ? Two things were evi- 
dent : it must be some power at a great distance from 
Russia, so as to make return even in that view hope- 
less ; and it must be a power of sufficient rank to 
insure them protection from any hostile efforts on the 
part of the Czarina for reclaiming them, or for chas- 
tising their revolt. Both conditions were united ob- 
viously in the person of Kien Long,i the reigning 
Emperor of China, who was further recommended to 
them by his respect for the head of their religion. To 
China, therefore, and, as their first rendezvous, to the 
shadow of the great Chinese Wall, it was settled by 
Zebek that they should direct their flight. 

Next came the question of time — token should the 
flight commence ? and, finally, the more delicate Ques- 
tion as to the choice of accomplices. To extend the 

' Kien Long, Emperor of China from 1735 to 1796, has borne 
with all writers a high reputation as a ruler and a man of letters 
as well. 



16 DE QUINCE Y. 

knowledge of the conspiracy too far was to insure its 
betrayal to the Russian Government. Yet, at some 
stage of the preparations, it was evident that a very 
extensive confidence must be made, because in no 
other way could the mass of the Kalmuck population 
be persuaded to furnish their families with the requi- 
site equipments for so long a migration. This critical 
step, however, it was resolved to defer up to the latest 
possible moment, and, at all events, to make no gen- 
eral communication on the subject until the time of 
departure should be definitely settled. In the mean 
time, Zebek admitted only three persons to his confi- 
dence ; of whom Oubacha, the reigning prince, was 
almost necessarily one ; but him, from his yielding and 
somewhat feeble character, he viewed rather in the 
light of a tool than as one of his active accomplices. 
Those whom (if anybody) he admitted to an unre- 
served participation in his counsels were two only : 
the great Lama ^ among the Kalmucks, and his own 
father-in-law, Erempel, a ruling prince of some tribe 
in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, recom- 
mended to his favour not so much by any strength of 
talent corresponding to the occasion as by his blind 
devotion to himself and his passionate anxiety to pro- 
mote the elevation of his daughter and his son-in-law 
to the throne of a sovereign prince. A titular prince 
Zebek already was : but this dignity, without the sub- 
stantial accompaniment of a sceptre, seemed but an 
empty sound to both of these ambitious rebels. The 

^ Lama is Tibetan for " spiritual lord." The religion, a form 
of Buddhism, is called Lamaism or Laraanism (which see in 
Encyclopcsdia Britannica) ; until our own times it seems to have 
preserved its hold wonderfully, agailist Christianity and Moham- 
medanism alike, on the feelings of the Mongol peoples. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 17 

other accomplice, whose name was Loosan-Dchaltzan, 
and whose rank was that of Lama, or Kahnuck j)on- 
tiff, was a person of far more distinguished preten- 
sions ; he had something of the same gloomy and 
terrific pride which marked the character of Zebek 
himself, manifesting also the same energy, accom- 
panied by the same unfaltering cruelty, and a natural 
facility of dissimulation even more profound. It was 
by this man that the other question was settled, as to 
the time for giving effect to their designs. His own 
pontifical character had suggested to him that, in 
order to strengthen their influence with the vast mob 
of simple-minded men whom they were to lead into 
a howling wilderness, after persuading them to lay 
desolate their own ancient hearths, it was indispens- 
able that they should be able, in cases of extremity, 
to plead the express sanction of God for their entire 
enterprise. This could only be done by addressing 
themselves to the great head ^ of their religion, the 
Dalai-Lama of Tibet. Him they easily persuaded to 
countenance their schemes : and an oracle was deliv- 
ered solemnly at Tibet, to the effect that no ultimate 
prosperity would attend this great Exodus unless it 
were pursued through the years of the tiger and the 
liare. Now, the Kalmuck custom is to distinguish 
their years by attaching to each a denomination taken 
from one of twelve animals, the exact order of suc- 
cession being absolutely fixed, so that the cycle re- 
volves of course through a period of a dozen years. 

1 There are really two heads, or popes, of Lamaism ; but the 
Dalai-Lama (oceau-priest) has the greater power. His home is 
near Lassa in Tibet ; and it is worth noticing as perhaps the real 
cause of this migration that it was to bring the Torgod near to 
this venerated being. 



18 DE QUINCE Y. 

Consequently, if> the approaching year of the tigei' 
were suffered to escape them, in that case the expedi- 
tion must be delayed for twelve years more ; within 
which period, even were no other unfavourable changes 
to arise, it was pretty well foreseen that the Russian 
Government would take the most effectual means for 
bridling their vagrant propensities by a ring-fence of 
forts or military posts ; to say nothing of the still 
readier i^lan for securing their fidelity (a plan already 
talked of in all quarters) by exacting a large body of 
hostages selected from the families of the most in- 
fluential nobles. On these cogent considerations, it 
was solemnly determined that this terrific experiment 
should be made in the next year of the tiger, which 
happened to fall upon the Christian year 1771.1 
With respect to the month, there was, unhappily for 
the Kalmucks, even less latitude allowed to their 
choice than with respect to the year. It was abso- 
lutely necessary, or it was thought so, that the differ- 
ent divisions of the nation which pastured their flocks 
on both banks of the Wolga should have the means 
of effecting an instantaneous junction ; because the 
danger of being intercepted by flying columns of the 
imperial armies was precisely the greatest at the out- 
set. Now, from the want of bridges, or sufficient 
river craft for transporting so vast a body of men, 
the sole means which could be depended upon (espe- 
cially where so many women, children, and camels 
were concerned) was ice : and this, in a state of suffi- 
cient firmness, could not be absolutely counted upon 
before the month- of January. Hence it happened 
that this astonishing Exodus of a whole nation, before 

^ What was going on in the western world at this time ? 
Consult the Chronological Table. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 19 

so much as a whisper of the design had begun to cir- 
culate amongst those whom it most interested, before 
it was even susi^ected that any man's wishes pointed 
in that direction, had been definitely appointed for 
January of the year 1771. And almost up to the 
Christmas of 1770 the poor simple Kalmuck herds- 
men and their families were going nightly to their 
peaceful beds, without even dreaming that the fiat 
had already gone forth from their rulers which con- 
signed those quiet abodes, together witli the peace 
and comfort which reigned within them, to a wither- 
ing desolation, now close at hand. 

Meantime war ^ raged on a great scale between Russia 
and the Sultan ; and, until the time arrived for throw- 
ing off their vassalage, it was necessary that Oubacha 
should contribute his usual contingent of martial aid. 
Nay, it had unfortunately become prudent that he 
should contribute much more than his usual aid. 
Human experience gives ample evidence that in some 
mysterious and unaccountable way no great design is 
ever agitated, no matter how few or how faithful may 
be the participators, but that^ some presentiment — 
some dim misgiving — is kindled amongst those whom 
it is chiefly important to blind. And, however it might 
have happened, certain it is that already, when as 
yet no syllable of the conspiracy had been breathed to 
any man whose very existence was not staked upon 
its concealment, nevertheless, some vague and uneasy 
jealousy had arisen in the Russian Cabinet as to the 
future schemes of the Kalmuck Khan : and very prob- 
able it is that, but for the war then raging, and the 
consequent prudence of conciliating a very important 
vassal, or, at least, of abstaining from what would 

^ Tliis war lasted from 1768 to 1774. 
- " But that" should be "but." 



20 DE QUINCE Y. 

powerfully alienate him, even at that moment such 
measures would have been adopted as must forever 
have intercepted the Kalmuck schemes. Slight as 
were the jealousies of the Imperial Court, they had 
not escaped the Machiavelian eyes of Zebek and the 
Lama. And under their guidance Oubacha, bending 
to the circumstances of the moment, and meeting the 
jealousy of the Russian Court with a policy corre- 
sponding to their own, strove by unusual zeal to efface 
the Czarina's unfavourable impressions. He enlarged 
the scale of his contributions, and that so prodigiously 
that he absolutely carried to head-quarters a force of 
35,000 cavalry fully equipped : some go further, and 
rate the amount beyond 40,000 ; but the smaller esti- 
mate is, at all events, loithin the truth. 

With this magnificent array of cavalry, heavy as 
well as light, the Khan went into the field under great 
expectations ; and these he more than realised. Hav- 
ing the good fortune to be concerned with so ill-organ- 
ised and disorderly a description of force as that which 
at all times composed the bulk of a Turkish army, he 
carried victory along with his banners ; gained many 
partial successes ; and at last, in a pitched battle, over- 
threw the Turkish force opposed to him with a loss of 
5,000 ^ men left upon the field. 

These splendid achievements seemed likely to oper- 
ate in various ways against the impending revolt. 
Oubacha had now a strong motive, in the martial 
glory acquired, for continuing his connexion with the 
empire in whose service he had won it, and by whom 
only it could be fully appreciated. He was now a 
great marshal of a great empire, one of the Paladins^ 

^ This is, no doubt, an exaggeration ; but see prefatory note. 
2 What is the original meaning of this word ? 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 21 

around the imperial throne ; in China he would be 
nobody, or (worse than that) a mendicant alien, pros- 
trate at the feet, and soliciting the precarious alms, of 
a prince with whom he had no connexion. Besides, 
it might reasonably be expected that the Czarina, 
grateful for the really efficient aid given by the Tartar 
prince, would confer upon him such eminent rewards 
as might be sufficient to anchor his hopes ftpon Russia, 
and to wean him from every possible seduction. These 
were the obvious suggestions of prudence and good 
sense to every man who stood neutral in the case. 
But they were disappointed. The Czarina knew her 
obligations to the Khan, but she did not acknowledge 
them.^ Wherefore ? That is a mystery, perhaps never 
to be explained. So it was, however. The Khan 
went unhonoured ; no ukase ever proclaimed his mer- 
its ; and perhaps, had he even been abundantly recom- 
pensed by Russia, there were others who would have 
defeated these tendencies to reconciliation. Erempel, 
Zebek, and Loosang the Lama, were pledged life-deep 
to prevent any accommodation ; and their efforts were 
unfortunately seconded by those of their deadliest 
enemies. In the Russian Court there were at that 
time some great nobles preoccupied with feelings of 
hatred and blind malice towards the Kalmucks, quite 
as strong as any which the Kalmucks could harbour 
towards Russia, and not, perhaps, so well founded. 
Just as mvich as the Kalmucks hated the Russian yoke, 
their galling assumption of authority, the marked air 
of disdain, as towards a nation of ugly, stupid, and 

^ Note how these short sentences delay the advancing narra- 
tive ; as the long sentences explain, so these short ones empha- 
size what is not to be explained. 



22 DE QUINCE Y. 

filthy ^ barbarians, which too generally marked the 
Russian bearing and language, but, above all, the in- 
solent contempt, or even outrages, which the Russian 
governors or great military commandants tolerated 
in their followers towards the barbarous religion and 
superstitious mummeries of the Kalmuck priesthood — 
precisely in that extent did the ferocity of the Russian 
resentment, 'and their wrath at seeing the ti-ampled 
worm turn or attempt a feeble retaliation, react upon 
the unfortunate Kalmucks. At this crisis, it is proba- 
ble that envy and wounded pride, upon witnessing the 
splendid victories of Oubacha and Momotbaeha over 
the Turks and Bashkirs,^ contributed strength to the 
Russian irritation. And it must have been through the 
intrigues of those nobles about her person who chiefly 
smarted under these feelings that the Czarina covdd 
ever have lent herself to the unwise and ungrateful 
policy pursued at this critical period towards the Kal- 
muck Khan. That Czarina was no longer Elizabeth 
Petrowna; it was Catharine 11.^ — a princess who did 
not often err so injuriously (injuriously for herself 
as much as for others) in the measures of her govern- 
ment. She had soon ample reason for rej)enting of 
her false policy. Meantime, how much it must have 

^ An accurate characterization of the Torgod, no doubt ; but 
one with which De Quincey is seldom, if ever, consistent. 

^ A Mongol-Finnish race, not unlike the Torgod in many re- 
spects, inhabiting the plains adjoining the South Uralian Moun- 
tains. They are Mohammedans, are still in great measure 
nomadic, and are generally very poor and ignorant. 

2 Elizabeth had been succeeded in 1762 by her nephew, Peter 
III., who had reigned but a few months when he was dethroned 
by a conspiracy of Russian nobles, headed by his German wife, 
Catherine. She became Empress in his stead, and reigned from 
1762 to 1796 as Catherine II. — Masson. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 23 

co-operated with the other motives previously acting 
upon Oubaeha in sustaining his determination to revolt, 
and how powerfully it must have assisted the efforts 
of all the Tartar chieftains in preparing the minds of 
their people to feel the necessity of this difficult enter- 
prise, by arming their pride and their suspicions against 
the Russian government, through the keenness of their 
sympathy with the wrongs of their insulted prince, 
may be readily imagined. It is a fact, and it has been 
confessed by candid Russians themselves, when treat- 
inof of this areat dismemberment, that the conduct of 
the Russian Cabinet throughout the period of suspense 
and during the crisis of hesitation in the Kalmuck 
Council was exactly such as was most desirable for the 
purposes of the conspirators ; it was such, in fact, as 
to set the seal to all their machinations, by supplying 
distinct evidences and official vouchers for what could 
otherwise have been, at the most, matters of doubtfid 
suspicion and indirect presumption. 

Nevertheless, in the face of all these arguments, 
and even allowing their weight so far as not at all 
to deny the injustice or the impolicy of the imperial 
ministers, it Is contended by many persons who have 
reviewed the affair with a command of all the docu- 
ments bearing on the case, more especially the letters 
or minutes of council subsequently discovered in the 
handwriting of Zebek-Dorchi, and the important evi- 
dence of the Russian captive Weseloff, who was car- 
ried off by the Kalmucks in their flight, that beyond 
all doubt Oubaeha was powerless for any purpose of 
impeding or even of delaying the revolt. He him- 
self, indeed, was under religious obligations of the 
most terrific solemnity never to flinch from the enter- 
prise, or even to slacken in his zeal : for Zebek-Dorchi, 



24 DE QUINCE Y. 

distrusting the firmness of his resolution under any 
unusual pressure of alarm or difficulty, had, in the 
very earliest stage of the conspiracy, availed himself 
of the Khan's well-known superstition to engage him, 
by means of previous concert with the priests and 
their head the Lama, in some dark and mysterious 
rites of consecration, terminating in oaths under such 
terrific sanctions as no Kalmuck would have courage 
to violate. As far, therefore, as regarded the per- 
sonal share of the Khan in what was to come, Zebek 
was entirely at his ease ; he knew him to be so deeply 
pledged by religious terrors to the prosecution of the 
conspiracy that no honours within the Czarina's gift 
could have possibly shaken his adhesion : and then, 
as to threats from the same quarter, he knew him to 
be sealed against those fears by others of a gloomier 
character, and better adapted to his peculiar tempera- 
ment. For Oubacha was a brave man as respected all 
bodily enemies or the dangers of human warfare, but 
was as sensitive and as timid as the most superstitious 
of old women in facing the frowns of a priest, or 
under the vague anticipations of ghostly retributions. 
But, had it been otherwise, and had there been any 
reason to apprehend an unsteady demeanour on the 
part of this prince at the approach of the critical mo- 
ment, such were the changes already effected in the 
state of their domestic politics amongst the Tartars, 
by the undermining arts of Zebek-Dorchi and his ally 
the Lama, that very little importance would have 
attached to that doubt. All power was now effectu- 
ally lodged in the hands of Zebek-Dorchi. He was 
the true and absolute wielder of the Kalmuck sceptre ; 
all measures of importance were submitted to his dis- 
cretion ; and nothing was finally resolved but under 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 25 

his dictation. This result ^ he had brought about, in a 
year or two, by means sufficiently simple : first of all, 
by availing- himself of the prejudice in his favour, so 
largely diffused amongst the lowest of the Kalmucks, 
that his own title to the throne, in quality of great- 
grandson in a direct line from Ajouka, the most illus- 
trious of all the Kalmuck Khans, stood upon a better 
basis than that of Oubacha, who derived from a col- 
lateral branch ; secondly, with respect to that sole ad- 
vantage which Oubacha possessed above himself in 
the ratification of his title, by improving this difference 
between their situations to the disadvantage of his 
competitor, as one who had not scrupled to accept that 
triumph from an alien power at the price of his inde- 
pendence which he himself (as he would have it 
understood) disdained to court ; thirdly, by his own 
talents and address, coupled' with the ferocious energy 
of his moral character ; fourthly — and perhaps in 
an equal degree — by the criminal facility and good 
nature of Oubacha ; finally (which is remarkable 
enough, as illustrating the character of the man), by 
that very new modelling of the Sarga or Privy Coun- 
cil which he had used as a principal topic of abuse 
and malicious insinuation against the Russian Govern- 
ment, whilst, in reality, he first had suggested the alter- 
ation to the Empress, and he chiefly ap^jropriated the 
political advantages which it was fitted to yield. For, 
as he was himself appointed the chief of the Sar- 
gatchi, and as the pensions to the inferior Sargatchi 
passed through his hands, whilst in effect they owed 
their appointments to his nomination, it may be easily 
supposed that, whatever power existed in the state 

1 Note the unusual length of these two sentences, which really 
make one ; and the uses to which they are put. 



26 DE QUINCEY. 

capable of controlling- the Khan being held by the 
Sarga under its new organisation, and this body being 
completely under his influence, the final result was to 
throw all the functions of the state, whether nominally 
in the prince or in the council, substantially into the 
hands of this one man ; whilst, at the same time, from 
the strict league which he maintained with the Lama, 
all the thunders of the spiritual power were always 
ready to come in aid of the magistrate, or to sujjply 
his incapacity in cases which he could not reach. 

But the time was now rapidly approaching for the 
mighty experiment. The day was drawing near on 
which the signal was to be given for raising the stand- 
ard of revolt, and by a combined movement on both 
sides of the Wolga for ^ spreading the smoke of one 
vast conflagration, that should wrap in a common 
blaze their own huts and the stately cities of their 
enemies, over the breadth and length of those great 
provinces in which their flocks were dispersed. The 
year of the tiger was now within one little month of its 
commencement ; the fifth morning of that year was 
fixed for the fatal day when the fortunes and happiness 
of a whole nation were to be put upon the hazard of 
a dicer's throw ; and as yet that nation was in profound 
ignorance of the whole plan. The Khan, sucli was 
the kindness of his nature, could not bring himself 
to make the revelation so urgently required. It was 
clear, however, that this could not be dela^'ed ; and 
Zebek-Dorchi took the task willingly upon himself. 
But where or how should this notification be made, 
so as to exclude Russian hearers? After some de- 
liberation, the following plan was adopted : — Cou- 
riers, it was contrived, should arrive in furious haste, 

^ Are not the words " by . . . Wolga " strangely placed ? 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 27 

one upon the heels of another, reporting a sudden 
inroad of the Kirghises ^ and Bashkirs upon the Kal- 
muck lands, at a point distant about 120 miles. Thither 
all the Kalmuck families, ac(!ording to immemorial 
custom, were required to send a separate representa- 
tive ; and there accordingly, within three days, all 
appeared. The distance, the solitary ground appointed 
for the rendezvous, the rapidity of the march, all 
tended to make it almost certain that no Eussian could 
he present. Zebek-Dorchi then came forward. He 
did not waste many words upon rhetoric. He unfurled 
an immense sheet of parchment, visible from the utter- 
most distance at which any of this vast crowd could 
stand ; the total number amounted to 80,000 ; all saw, 
and many heard. They were told of the ojjpressions 
of Russia ; of her pride and haughty disdain evidenced 
towards them by a thousand acts ; of her contempt 
for their religion ; of her determination to reduce them 
to absolute slavery ; of the pi-eliminary measures she 
had already taken by erecting forts upon many of the 
great rivers in their neighbourhood ; of the ulterior 
intentions she thus announced to circumscribe their 
pastoral lands, until they would all be obliged to 
renounce their flocks, and to collect in towns like 
Sarepta,^ there to pursue mechanical and servile trades 
of shoemaker, tailor, and weaver, such as the f reeborn 

^ A Mongol race who occupied the stejipes eastward from the 
Ural to Lake Balkhash, and were therefore neighbors of the 
Bashkirs and the Torgod. Their religion is a compound of 
Mohammedanism and idolatry ; they are still in habits largely 
nomadic, and in character cruel and vindictive. To this race 
the Cossacks (Kirghiz-Kazaks) are thought to belong. 

^ A town of industrious German rftechanics on the northern 
edge of the Torgod camping-grounds. 



28 DE QUINCE Y. 

Tartar had always disdained. " Then again," said the 
subtle prince,^ " she increases her military levies upon 
our population every year ; we pour out our blood as 
young- men in her defence, or more often in support 
of her insolent aggressions ; and as old men we reap 
nothing from our sufferings, nor benefit by our sur- 
vivorship where so many are sacrificed." At this 
point of his harangue, Zebek produced several j)apers 
(forged, as it is generally believed, by himself and the 
Lama), containing projects of the Russian court for 
a general transfer of the eldest sons, taken en masse 
from the greatest Kalmuck families, to the imperial 
court. " Now let this be once accomplished," he 
argued, " and there is an end of all useful resistance 
from that day forwards. Petitions we might make, 
or even remonstrances ; as men of words we might 
play a bold part ; but for deeds, for that sort of lan- 
guage by which our ancestors were used to speak — 
holding us by such a chain, Russia would make a jest 
of our wishes, knowing full well that we should not 
dare to make any effectual movement." 

Having thus sufficiently roused the angry passions 
of his vast audience, and having alarmed their fears 
by this pretended scheme against their firstborn (an 
artifice which was indispensable to his purpose, be- 
cause it met beforehand every form of amendment to 
his proposal coming from the more moderate nobles, 
who would not otherwise have failed to insist upon 
trying the effect of bold addresses to the Empress 
before resorting to any desperate extremity), Zebek- 
Dorchi opened his scheme of revolt, and, if so, of 

^ Observe Zebek's appeal to the Kalmuck nationalism. Cite 
classical instances of speeches put by authors into the mouths of 
their generals. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 29 

instant revolt ; since any preparations reported at St. 
Petersburg would be a signal for the armies of Russia 
to cross into such positions from all parts of Asia as 
would effectually intercept their march. It is remark- 
able, howev^er, that, with all his audacity and his 
reliance upon the momentary excitement of the Kal- 
mucks, the subtle prince did not venture, at this stage 
of his seduction, to make so startling a proposal as 
that of a flight to China. All that he held out for the 
present was a rapid march to the Temba^ or some 
other great river, which they were to cross, and to 
take up a strong position on the farther bank, from 
which, as from a post of conscious security, they could 
hold a bolder language to the Czarina, and one which 
would have a better chance of winning a favourable 
audience. 

These things, in the irritated condition of the sim- 
ple Tartars, passed by acclamation ; and all returned 
homewards to push forward with the most furious 
speed the preparations for their awful undertaking. 
Rapid and energetic these of necessity were ; and in 
that degree they became noticeable and manifest to 
the Russians who happened to be intermingled with 
the different hordes, either on commercial errands, or 
as agents officially from the Russian Government, 
some in a financial, others in a diplomatic character.^ 

Amongst these last (indeed at the head of them) 
was a Russian of some distinction, by name Kichin- 
skoi, a man memorable for his vanity, and memorable 
also as one of the many victims to the Tartar revolu- 

' The Emba (Temba is an error) runs through the Kirghiz 
territory to the Gulf of Emba at the northeast extremity of the 
Caspian Sea. 

2 A good example of the brief transitional paragraph. 



30 DE QUINCE Y. 

tion. This Kicliinskoi had been sent by the Empress 
as her envoy to overlook the conduct of the Kahnucks ; 
he was styled the Grand Pristaw, or Great Commis- 
sioner, and was universally known amongst the Tartar 
tribes by this title. His mixed character of ambas- 
sador and of political surveillant} combined with the 
depetident state of the Kalmucks, gave him a real 
weight in the Tartar councils, and might have given 
him a far greater, had not his outrageous self-conceit 
and his arrogant confidence in his own authority, as 
due chiefly to his personal qualities for command, led 
him into such harsh displays of power, and menaces 
so odious to the Tartar pride, as very soon made him an 
object of their profoundest malice.^ He had publicly 
insulted the Khan ; and, upon making a communica- 
tion to him to the effect that some reports began to 
circulate, and even to reach the Empress, of a design 
in agitation to fly from the imperial dominions, he had 
ventured to say, " But this you dare not attempt ; I 
laugh at such rumours ; yes, Khan, I laugh at them to 
the Empress ; for you are a chained bear, and that you 
know." The Khan turned away on his heel with marked 
disdain ; and the Pristaw, foaming at the mouth, con- 
tinued to utter, amongst those of the Khan's attendants 
who staid behind to catch his real sentiments in a mo- 
ment of unguarded passion, all that the blindest frenzy 
of rage could suggest to the most presumptuous of 

^ Overseer ; cf. surveillance, p. 8. De Quiucey treats both 
words as foreign words ; should we do so now ? 

2 It is worth notice that De Quincey's characters are all 
rather conventional types : we have had the brave but unsuspect- 
ing prince, and the wily, unscrupulous and revengeful rival ; now 
appears the haughty official, blinded by his own conceit. \^e 
shall get no really original characters from De Quiucey, though 
we may get entirely imaginary ones. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 31 

fools. It was now ascertained that suspicions had 
arisen ; but at the same time it was ascertained that 
the Pristaw spoke no more than the truth in represent- 
ing himself to have discredited these suspicions. The 
fact was that the mere infatuation of vanity made him 
believe that nothing could go on undetected by his all- 
piercing sagacity, and that no rebellion could prosper 
when rebuked by his commanding presence. The 
Tartars, therefore, pursued their preparations, confiding 
in the obstinate blindness of the Grand Pristaw as in 
their perfect safeguard ; and such it proved — to his 
own ruin as well as that of myriads besides. 

Christmas arrived ; and a little before that time 
courier upon courier came dropping in, one upon the 
very heels of another, to St. Petersburg, assuring the 
Czarina that beyond all doubt the Kalmucks were in 
the very crisis of departure. These despatches came 
from the Governor of Astrachan, and copies were in- 
stantly forwarded to Kichinskoi. Now, it happened 
that between this governor — a Russian named Beke- 
toff — and the Pristaw had been an ancient feud.^ The 
very name of Beketoff inflamed his resentment ; and 
no sooner did he see that hated name attached to the 
despatch than he felt himself confirmed in his former 
views with tenfold bigotry, and wrote instantly, in 
terms of the most pointed ridicule, against the new 
alarmist, pledging his own head upon the visionariness 
of his alarms. Beketoff, however, was not to be put 
down by a few hard words, or by ridicule : he per- 
sisted^ in his statements ; the Russian ministry were 
confounded by the obstinacy of the disputants ; and 
some were beginning even to treat the Governor of 
Astrachan as a bore, and as the dupe of his own 
1 This fend is of De Quincey's making. 



32 DE QUINCE Y. 

nervous terrors, when the memorable day arrived, the 
fatal 5th of January, which for ever terminated the 
dispute, and put a seal upon the earthly hopes and 
fortunes of unnumbered myriads. The Governor of 
Astrachan was the first to hear the news. Stung by 
the mixed furies of jealousy, of triumphant vengeance, 
and of anxious ambition, he sprang into his sledge, 
and, at the rate of 300 miles a day, pursued his route 
to St. Petersburg — rushed into the Imperial presence 
— announced the total realisation of his worst pre- 
dictions ; and, upon the confirmation of this intelligence 
by subsequent despatches from many different posts 
on the Wolga, he received an imperial commission to 
seize the person of his deluded enemy, and to keep 
him in strict caj^tivity. These orders were eagerly 
fulfilled ; and the unfortunate Kichinskoi soon after- 
wards expired of grief and mortification in the gloomy 
solitude of a dungeon — a victim to his own immeasur- 
able vanity, and the blinding self-delusions of a pre- 
sumption that refused all warning. 

The Governor of Astrachan had been but too faith- 
ful a prophet. Perhaps even he was surprised at the 
suddenness with which the verification followed his 
reports. Precisely on the 5th of January, the day so 
solemnly appointed under religious sanctions by the 
Lama, the Kalmucks on the east bank of the Wolga 
were seen at the earliest dawn of day assembling by 
troops and squadrons, and in the tumultuous move- 
ment of some great morning of battle.^ Tens of 
thousands continued moving off the groiaid at every 
half-hour's interval. Women and children, to the 
amount of two hundred thousand and upwards, were 

^ Observe the harmony of sound and sense. Why is " great ' 
prefixed to " morning" instead of to "battle " ? 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 33 

placed upon waggons, or upon camels, and drew off 
by masses of twenty thousand at once — placed under 
suitable escorts, and continually swelled in numbers 
by other outlying bodies of the horde, who kept falling 
in at various distances upon the first and second day's 
march. From sixty to eighty thousand of those who 
were the best mounted staid behind the rest of the 
tribes, with purposes of devastation and plunder more 
violent than prudence justified, or the amiable char- 
acter of the Khan could be supposed to approve. But 
in this, as in other instances, he was completely over- 
ruled by the malignant counsels of Zebek - Dorchi. 
The first tempest of the desolating fury of the Tar- 
tars discharged itself upon their own habitations. But 
this, as cutting off all infirm looking backward from 
the hardships of their march, had been thought so 
necessary a measure by all the chieftains that even 
Oubacha himself was the first to authorise the act 
by his own example. He seized a torch previously 
prepared with materials the most durable as well as 
combustible, and steadily applied it to the timbers ^ of 
his own palace. Nothing was saved from the general 
wreck except the portable part of the domestic uten- 
sils, and that part of the wood-work which could be 
applied to the manufacture of the long Tartar lances. 
This chapter in their memorable day's work being 
finished, and the whole of their villages^ through- 
out a district of ten thousand square miles in one 
simultaneous blaze, the Tartars waited for further 
orders. 

These, it was intended, should have taken a char- 
acter of valedictory vengeance, and thus have left 

1 De Quincey forgets, in his creative fervor, tliat the Torgocl 
lived only in tents. 



34 DE QUINCE Y. 

behind to the Czarina a dreadful commentary upon 
the main motives of their flight. It was the purpose 
of Zebek-Dorchi that all the Russian towns, churches, 
and buildings of every description, should be given up 
to pillage and destruction, and such treatment applied 
to the defenceless inhabitants as might naturally be 
expected from a fierce people already infuriated by 
the spectacle of their own outrages, and by the bloody 
retaliations which they must necessarily have pro- 
voked. This part of the tragedy, however, was hap- 
pily intercepted by a providential disappointment at 
the very crisis of departure. It has been mentioned 
already that the motive for selecting the depth of 
winter as the season of flight (which otherwise was 
obviously the very worst possible) had been the impos- 
sibility of effecting a junction sufficiently rapid with 
the tribes on the west of the Wolga, in the absence 
of bridges, unless by a natural bridge of ice. For this 
one advantage, the Kalmuck leaders had consented to 
aggravate by a thousandfold the calamities inevitable 
to a rapid flight over boundless tracts of country, with 
women, children, and herds of cattle — for this one 
single advantage ; and yet, after all, it was lost. The 
reason never has been explained satisfactorily, but the 
fact was such. Some have said that the signals were 
not properly concerted for marking the moment of ab- 
solute departure — that is, for signifying whether the 
settled intention of the Eastern Kalmucks might not 
have been suddenly interrupted by adverse intelligence. 
Others have supposed that the ice might not be equally 
strong on both sides of the river, and might even be 
generally insecure for the treading of heavy and heav- 
ily-laden animals such as camels. But the prevailing 
notion is that some accidental movements on the 3d 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 35 

and 4th of January of Russian troops in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Western Kahnucks, though really 
having no reference to them or their plans, had been 
construed into certain signs that all was discovered ; 
and that the prudence of the Western chieftains, who, 
from situation, had never been exposed to those in- 
trigues by which Zebek-Dorchi had practised upon the 
pride of the Eastern tribes, now stepped in to save 
their people from ruin. Be the cause what it might, 
it is certain tliat the Western Kalmucks were in some 
way prevented from forming the intended junction 
with their brethren of the opposite bank ; and the 
result was that at least one hundred thousand of these 
Tartars were left behind in Russia. This accident it 
was which saved their Russian neighbours universally 
from the desolation which else awaited them. One 
general massacre and conflagration would assuredly 
have surprised them, to the utter extermination of 
their property, their houses, and themselves, had it not 
been for this disappointment. But the Eastern chief- 
tains did not dare to put to hazard the safety of their 
brethren under the first impulse of the Czarina's ven- 
geance for so dreadful a tragedy ; for, as they were 
well aware of too many circumstances by which she 
might discover the concurrence of the Western people 
in the general scheme of revolt, they justly feared 
that she would thence infer their concurrence also in 
the bloody events which marked its outset. 

Little did the Western Kalmucks guess what rea- 
sons they also had for gratitude on account of an 
interposition so unexpected, and which at the mo- 
ment they so generally deplored. Could they but 
have witnessed the thousandth part of the sufferings 
which overtook their Eastern brethren in the first 



36 DE QUINCE Y. 

month of their sad flight, they would have blessed 
Heaven for their own narrow escape ; and yet these 
sufferings of the first month were but a prelude or 
foretaste comparatively slight of those which after- 
wards succeeded. 

For now began to unroll the most awfid series of 
calamities, and the most extensive, which is anywhere 
recorded to have visited the sons and daughters of 
men. It is possible that the sudden inroads of de- 
stroying nations, such as the Huns,^ or tlie Avars, 
or the Mongol Tartars, may have inflicted misery as 
extensive ; but there the misery and the desolation 
would be sudden, like the flight of volleying light- 
ning. Those who were spared at first would gener- 
ally be spared to the end ; those who perished at all 
would perish at once. It is possible that the French 
retreat^ from Moscow may have made some nearer 
approach to this calamity in duration, though still a 
feeble and miniature approach ; for the French suf- 
ferings did not commence in good earnest until about 
one month from the time of leaving Moscow; and 
thouofh it is true that afterwards the vials of wrath 
were emptied upon the devoted army for six or seven 
weeks in succession, yet what is that to this Kalmuck 

1 The Turanian Huns broke into Europe from beyond the 
Caspian about 375 ; they were fierce and brutal nomads, and 
they forced westward the Germanic people they encountered. 
The Avars, also a Turanian race, and of like character, de- 
scended two centuries later upon the Slavonic peoples and forced 
them, some towards the Baltic, and others towards the Adriatic. 
The great Mongol inroads of the thirteenth century and later, 
though equally devastating and quite as successful, had little 
permanent effect upon Europe ; the Mongols kept Russia tribu- 
tary for a while and deposited there fragments of their hordes. 

^ See page 6, note 1. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 37 

tragedy, which lasted for more than as many mouths ? 
But the main feature of horror by which the Tartar 
march was distinguished from the Fi-ench lies in the 
accompaniment of women ^ and children. There were 
both, it is true, with the French army, but not so 
many as to bear any marked proportion to the total 
numbers concerned. The French, in short, were 
merely an army — a host of professional destroyers, 
whose regular trade was bloodshed and whose regular 
element was danger and suffering. But the Tartars 
were a nation carrying along with them more than 
two hundred and fifty thousand women and children, 
utterly unequal, for the most part, to any contest with 
the calamities before them.^ The Children of Israel 
were in the same circumstances as to the accompani- 
ment of their families ; but they were released from 
the pursuit of their enemies in a very early stage of 
their flight ; and their subsequent residence in the 
Desert was not a march, but a continued halt, and un- 
der a continued interposition of Heaven for their com- 
fortable support. Earthquakes, again, however com- 
prehensive in their ravages, are shocks of a moment's 
duration. A much nearer approach made to the wide 
range and the long duration of the Kalmuck tragedy 
may have been in a pestilence such as that which 

^ Singular it is, and not generally known, tliat Grecian women 
accompanied the anabasis of the younger Cyrus, and the sub- 
sequent Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Xenophon affirms that 
there were " many " women in the Greek army — iroWal ?i(Tav 
eratpai iv rtf ffTparevfiari ; and in a late stage of that trying ex- 
pedition it is evident that women were amongst the survivors. 
— De Quincey's Note. 

^ In this comparison of the Torgod flight with the French re- 
treat, De Quincey neglects the important point that the Torgod 
was a nomadic tribe, the French a highly civilized people. 



38 DE QUINCE Y. 

visited Athens ^ in the Peloponnesian War, or Lon- 
don^ in the reign of Charles II. There also the 
martyrs were counted by myriads, and the period of 
the desolation was counted by months. But, after 
all, the total amount of destruction was on a smaller 
scale ; and there was this feature of alleviation to the 
conscious pressure of the calamity — that the mis- 
ery was withdrawn from public notice into private 
chambers and hospitals. The siege of Jerusalem ^ by 
Vespasian and his son, taken in its entire circum- 
stances, comes nearest of all — for breadth and depth 
of suffering, for duration, for the exasperation of the 
suffering from without by internal feuds, and, finally, 
for that last most appalling expression of the furnace- 
heat of the anguish in its power to extinguish the nat- 
ural affections even of maternal love. But, after all, 
each case had circumstances of romantic misery pecul- 
iar to itself — circumstances without precedent, and 
(wherever human nature is ennobled by Christianity), 
it may be confidently hoped, never to be repeated. 

The first point to be reached, before any hope of 
repose could be encouraged, was the river Jaik.* This 

1 430 B. c. " The dead lay as they had died, one upon 
another ; while others, hardly alive, wallowed in the streets, 
and crawled about every fountain, craving for water." — Thucy- 
dides, book ii. chap. 52. 

- The Great Plague of 1665 of which Defoe wrote his famous 
"History." 

3 A. D. 70. The contemporary Jewish historian, Josephus, 
claims that 1,100,000 people perished. 

* Now called the Ural. This paragraph, in which De Qiiineey 
reviews the march from the point of view of dramatic develop- 
ment, before recounting it, bears the same relation to what fol- 
lows that the first three paragraphs bear to the whole. De 
Quincey is careful lest, in noting the details, we lose the whole 
picture. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 39 

was not above 300 miles from the main point of de- 
parture on the Wolga ; and, if the march thither was 
to be a forced one, and a severe one, it was alleged, 
on the other hand, that the suffering would be the 
more brief and transient ; one summary exertion, not 
to be repeated, and all was achieved. Forced the 
march was, and severe beyond example : there the 
forewarning proved correct ; but the promised rest 
proved a mere phantom of the wilderness — a vision- 
ary rainbow, which fled before their hope-sick eyes, 
across these interminable solitudes, for seven months 
of hardship and calamity, without a pause. These 
sufferings, by their very nature, and the circumstances 
under which they arose, were (like the scenery of the 
steppes) somewhat monotonous in their colouring and 
external features ; what variety, however, there was 
will be most naturally exhibited by tracing histori- 
cally the successive stages of the general misery, ex- 
actly as it unfolded itself under the double agency of 
weakness still increasing from within and hostile pres- 
sure from without. Viewed in this manner, under the 
real order of development, it is remarkable that these 
sufferings of the Tartars, though under the moulding 
hands of accident, arrange themselves almost with a 
scenical propriety. They seem combined as with the 
skill of an artist ; the intensity of the misery advan- 
cing regularly with the advances of the mai'ch, and 
the stages of the calamity corresponding to the stages 
of the route ; so that, upon raising the curtain which 
veils the great catastrophe, we behold one vast climax 
of anguish, towering upwards by regular gradations, 
as if constructed artificially for picturesque effect — 
a result which might not have been surprising had it 
been reasonable to anticipate the same rate of speed, 



40 DE QUINCE Y. 

and even an accelerated rate, as prevailing tlirough 
the later stages of the expedition. But it seemed, 
on the contrary, most reasonable to calculate upon a 
continual decrement in the rate of motion according 
to the increasing distance from the head-quarters of 
the pursuing enemy. This calculation, however, was 
defeated by the extraordinary circumstance that the 
Russian armies did not begin to close in very fiercely 
upon the Kalmucks until after they had accomplished 
a distance of full 2000 miles : 1000 miles farther on 
the assaults became even more tumultuous and mur- 
derous : and already the great shadows of the Chi- 
nese Wall were dimly descried when the frenzy and 
acharnement ^ of the pursuers, and the bloody despera- 
tion of the miserable fugitives, had reached its utter- 
most extremity. Let us briefly rehearse the main 
stages of the misery, and trace the ascending steps of 
the tragedy, according to the great divisions of the 
route marked out by the central rivers of Asia. 

The first stage, we have already said, was from the 
Wolga to the Jaik ; the distance about 300 miles ; 
the time allowed seven days. For the first week, 
therefore, the rate of marching averaged about 43 
English miles a day. The weather was cold, but 
bracing ; and, at a more moderate pace, this part of 
the journey might have been accomplished without 
much distress by a people as hardy as the Kalmucks : 
as it was, the cattle suffered greatly fi^om over-driving ; 
milk began to fail even for the children ; the sheep 
perished by wholesale ; and the children themselves 
were saved only by the innumerable camels. 

The Cossacks^ who dwelt upon the banks of the 

^ Is there good reason for using this word ? 

2 Cf. page 27, note 1. They are best known througli their 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 41 

Jaik were the first among the subjects of Russia to 
come mto collision with the Kalmucks. Great was 
their surprise at the suddenness of the irruption, and 
great also their consternation ; for, according to their 
settled custom, by far the greater part of their number 
was absent during the winter months at the fisheries 
upon the Caspian. Some who were liable to surprise 
at the most exposed points fled in crowds to the for- 
tress of Koulagina, which was immediately invested 
and summoned by Oubacha. He had, however, in 
his train only a few light pieces of artillery ; and the 
Russian commandant at Koulagina, being aware of 
the hurried circumstances in which the Khan was 
placed, and that he stood upon the very edge, as it 
were, of a renewed flight, felt encouraged by these 
considerations to a more obstinate resistance than 
might else have been advisable, with an enemy so 
little disposed to observe the usages of civilised war- 
fare. The period of his anxiety was not long : on the 
fifth day of the siege he descried from the walls a suc- 
cession of Tartar couriers, mounted upon fleet Bactrian 
camels, crossing the vast plains around the fortress at 
a furious pace, and riding into the Kalmuck encamj)- 
ment at various points. Great agitation appeared 
immediately to follow : orders were soon after de- 
spatched in all directions ; and it became speedily 
known that upon a distant flank of the Kalmuck 
movement a bloody and exterminating battle had 
been fought the day before, in which one entire tribe 
of the Khan's dependants, numbering not less than 
9000 fighting men, had perished to the last man. 

service as Russian cavalry. These five paragraphs, including 
the destruction of the clan, spring almost entirely from De 
Quincey's imagination. 



42 DE QUINCE Y. 

This was the ouloss, or clan, called Feka-Zechorr, 
between whom and the Cossacks there was a feud of 
ancient standing. In selecting, therefore, the points 
of attack, on occasion of the present hasty inroad, the 
Cossack chiefs were naturally eager so to direct their 
efforts as to combine with the service of the Empress 
some gratification to their own party hatreds : more 
especially as the present was likely to be their final 
opportunity for revenge, if the Kalmuck evasion should 
prosper. Having, therefore, concentrated as large a 
body of Cossack cavalry as circumstances allowed, 
they attacked the hostile ovloss with a precipitation 
which denied to it all means for communicating with 
Oubacha; for the necessity of commanding an ample 
range of pasturage, to meet the necessities of their 
vast flocks and herds, had separated this otdoss from 
the Khan's head-quarters by an interval of 80 miles ; 
and thus it was, and not from oversight, that it came 
to be thrown entirely upon its own resources. These 
had proved insufficient : retreat, from the exhausted 
state of their horses and camels, no less than from the 
prodigious encumbrances of their live stock, was ab- 
solutely out of the question : quarter was disdained on 
the one side, and would not have been granted on the 
other : and thus it had happened that the setting sun 
of that one day (the thirteenth from the first opening 
of the revolt) threw his parting rays upon the final 
agonies of an ancient oidoss, sti-etched upon a bloody 
field, who on that day's dawning had held and styled 
themselves an independent nation. 

Universal consternation was diffused through the 
wide borders of the Khan's encampment by this dis- 
astrous intelligence ; not so much on account of the 
numbers slain, or the total extinction of a powerful 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 43 

ally, as because the position of the Cossack force was 
likely to put to hazard the future advances of the 
Kalmucks, or at least to retard and hold them in 
check until the heavier columns of the Russian army 
should arrive upon their flanks. The siege of Koula- 
gina was instantly raised ; and that signal, so fatal to 
the happiness of the women and their children, once 
again resounded through the tents — the signal for 
flight, and this time for a flight more rapid than ever. 
About 150 miles ahead of their present position there 
arose a tract of hilly country, forming a sort of mar- 
gin to the vast sea-like expanse of champaign savan- 
nahs, steppes, and occasionally of sandy deserts, which 
stretched away on each side of this margin both east- 
wards and westwards. Pretty nearly in the centre of 
this hilly range lay a narrow defile, through which 
passed the nearest and the most practicable route to 
the River Torgai ^ (the farther bank of which river 
offered the next great station of security for a general 
halt). It was the more essential to gain this pass 
before the Cossacks, inasmuch as not only would the 
delay in forcing the pass give time to the Russian 
pursuing columns for combining their attacks, and for 
bringing up their artillery, but also because (even if 
all enemies in pursuit were thrown out of the question) 
it was held by those best acquainted with the difficult 
and obscure geography of these pathless steppes — that 
the loss of this one narrow strait amongst the hills 
would have the effect of throwing them (as their only 
alternative in a case where so wide a sweep of pastur- 
age was required) upon a circuit of at least 500 miles 

^ The River Turgai can best be located by the town Tiirgai, 
which is again in the district of the same name ; the town is 
iicrth of the Aral Sea and near the 50th parallel. 



44 DE QUINCE Y. 

extra ; besides that, after all, this circuitous route 
would carry them to the Torgai at a point ill fitted 
for the passage of their heavy baggage. The defile 
in the hills, therefore, it was resolved to gain ; and 
yet, unless they moved upon it with the velocity of 
light cavalry, there was little chance but it would be 
found preoccupied by the Cossacks. They also, it is 
true, had suffered greatly in the bloody action with 
the defeated ouloss ; but the excitement of victory, 
and the intense sympathy with their unexampled tri- 
umph, had again swelled their ranks, and would prob- 
ably act with the force of a vortex to draw in their 
simple countrymen from the Caspian. The question, 
therefore, of preoccupation was reduced to a race. 
The Cossacks were marching upon an oblique line not 
above 50 miles longer than that which led to the same 
point from the Kalmuck head-quarters before Koula- 
gina ; and therefore, without the most furious haste 
on the part of the Kalmucks, there was not a chance 
for them, burdened and " trashed " ^ as they were, to 
anticipate so agile a light cavalry as the Cossacks in 
seizing this important pass. 

Dreadful were the feelings of the poor women on 
hearing this exposition of the case. For they easily 
understood that too capital an interest (the summa 
rerum ^) was now at stake, to allow of any regard 
to minor interests, or what could be considered such 
in their present circumstances. The dreadful week 

1 " Trashed : " — This is an expressive word used by Beau- 
mont and Fletcher in their Bonduca, etc., to describe the case 
of a person retarded and embarrassed in flight, or in pursuit, by 
some encumbrance, whether thing or person, too valuable to be 
left behind. — De Quincey's Note. Originally a " trash " was 
a clog or weight about the neck, used to restrain a hunting-dog. 

2 Is anything gained by this phrase ? 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 45 

already passed — their inauguration in misery — was 
yet fresh in their remembrance. The scars of suffer- 
ing were impi-essed not only upon their memories, but 
upon their very persons and the persons of their chil- 
dren. And they knew that, where no speed had much 
chance of meeting the cravings of the chieftains, no 
test would be accepted, short of absolute exhaustion, 
that as much had been accomplished as could have been 
accomplished. Weseloff, the Russian captive, has re- 
corded the silent wretchedness with which the women 
and elder boys assisted in drawing the tent-ropes. On 
the 5th of Januaiy all had been animation and the 
joyousness of indefinite expectation ; now, on the con- 
trary, a brief but bitter experience had taught them to 
take an amended calculation of what it was that lay 
before them. 

One whole day and far into the succeeding night 
had the renewed flight continued ; the sufferings had 
been greater tlian before ; for the cold had been more 
intense ; and many perished out of the living creatures 
through every class, except only the camels, whose 
powers of endurance seemed equally adapted to cold 
and to heat. The second morning, however, brought 
an alleviation to the distress. Snow had begun to fall ; 
and, though not deep at present, it was easily foreseen 
that it soon would be so ; and that, as a halt would in 
that case become unavoidable, no plan could be better 
than that of staying where they were ; especially as 
the same cause would check the advance of the Cos- 
sacks. Here then was the last interval of comfort 
which gleamed upon the luihappy nation during their 
whole migration. For ten days the snow continued 
to fall with little intermission. At the end of that time 
keen, bright, frosty weather succeeded ; the drifting 



46 DE QUINCE Y. 

had ceased ; in three days the smooth expanse became 
firm enough to support the treading of the camels ; 
and the flight was recommenced. But during the halt 
much domestic comfort had been enjoyed, and for the 
last time universal plenty. The cows and oxen had 
perished in such vast numbers on the previous marclies 
that an order was now issued to turn what remained to 
account by slaughtering the whole, and salting what- 
ever part should be found to exceed the immediate 
consumption. This measure led to a scene of general 
banqueting and even of festivity amongst all who were 
not incapacitated for joyous emotions by distress of 
mind, by grief for the unhappy experience of the few 
last days, and by anxiety for the too gloomy future. 
Seventy thousand persons of all ages had already per- 
ished, exclusively of the many thousand allies who 
had been cut down by the Cossack sabre. And the 
losses in reversion were likely to be many more. For 
rumours began now to arrive from all quarters, by the 
mounted couriers whom the Khan had despatched to 
the rear and to each flank as well as in advance, that 
large masses of the imperial troops were converging 
from all parts of Central Asia to the fords of the River 
Torgai, as the most convenient point for intercepting 
the flying tribes ; and it was by this time well known 
that a powerful division was close in their rear, and 
was retarded only by the numerous artillery which 
had been judged necessary to support their operations. 
New motives were thus daily arising for quickening 
the motions of the wretched Kalmucks, and for ex- 
hausting those who were already but too much 
exhausted. 

It was not until the 2d day of February that the 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 47 

Khan's advanced guard came in sight of Ouchini,^ the 
defile among the liills of Mougaldchares/ in whicli they 
anticipated so bloody an oj)position from the Cossacks. 
A pretty large body of these light cavalry had, in 
fact, preoccupied the pass by some hours ; but the 
Khan having two great advantages — namely, a strong- 
body of infantry, who had been conveyed by sections 
of five on about 200 camels, and some pieces of light 
artillery wl^ich he had not yet been forced to abandon 
— soon began to make a serious impression upon this 
unsupported detachment ; and they would probably at 
any rate have retired ; but at the very moment when 
they were making some dispositions in that view Zebek- 
Dorchi appeared upon their rear with a body of trained 
riflemen, who had distinguished themselves in the war 
with Turkey. These men had contrived to crawl unob- 
served over the cliffs which skirted the ravine, availing 
themselves of the dry beds of the summer torrents, and 
other inequalities of the ground, to conceal their move- 
ment. Disorder and trepidation ensued instantly in 
the Cossack files ; the Khan, who had been waiting 
with the elite of his heavy cavalry, charged furiously 
upon them ; total overthrow followed to the Cossacks, 
and a slaus^hter such as in some measure aven":ed the 
recent bloody extermination of their allies, the ancient 
ouloss of Feka-Zechorr. The slight horses of the 
Cossacks were unable to support the weight of heavy 
Polish dragoons and a body of trained cameleers (that 
is, cuirassiers mounted on camels) ; hardy they were, 
but not strong, nor a match for their antagonists in 
weight; and their extraordinary efforts through the 
last few days to gain their present position had greatly 

^ Ouchim is not given on modern maps. The Mugodschar 
mountains extend from the Ural chain towards the Aral Sea. 



48 DE QUINCE r. 

diminished their powers for effecting an escape. Very- 
few, in fact, did escape ; and the bloody day at 
Ouchim became as memorable amongst the Cossacks 
as that which, about twenty days before, had signal- 
ised the complete annihilation of the Feka-Zechorr. 

The road was now open to the river Irgitch,^ and as 
yet even far beyond it to the Torgau ; but how long 
this state of things would continue was every day 
more doubtful. Certain intelligence was now received 
that a lai'ge Russian army, Avell appointed in every 
arm, was advancing upon the Torgau, under the com- 
mand of General Ti-aubenberg. This officer was to 
be joined on his route by ten thousand Bashkirs and 
pretty nearly the same amount of Kirghises — both 
hereditary enemies of the Kalmucks, both exasperated 
to a point of madness by the bloody trophies which 
Oubacha and Momotbacha had, in late years, won from 
such of their compatriots as served under the Sultan. 
The Czarina's yoke these wild nations bore with sub- 
missive patience, but not the hands by which it had 
been imposed ; and, accordingly, catching with eager- 
ness at the present occasion offered to their vengeance, 
they sent an assurance to the Czarina of their perfect 
obedience to her commands, and at the same time a 
message significantly declaring in what spirit they 
meant to execute them, viz., "that they would ^ not 
trouble her majesty with prisoners." 

Here then arose, as before with the Cossacks, a race 
for the Kalmucks with the regular armies of Russia, 
and concurrently with nations as fierce and semi- 
humanised as themselves, besides that they had been 

1 The Irgiz, on which the town Irgiz stands, flows into Lake 
Chalkar, north of the Aral Sea. 

2 Ought not " should " to stand here ? 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 49 

stung into threefold activity by the furies of morti- 
fied pride and military abasement, under the eyes of 
the Turkish Sultan. The foi-ces, and more especially 
the artillery, of Russia were far too overwhelming to 
permit the thought of a regular opposition in pitched 
battles, even with a less dilapidated state of their re- 
sources than they could reasonably expect at the period 
of their arrival on the Torgau. In their speed lay 
their only hope — in strength of foot, as before, and 
not in strength of arm. Onward, therefore, the Kal- 
mucks pressed, marking the lines of their wide-extend- 
ing march over the sad solitudes of the steppes by a 
never-ending chain of corpses. The old and the young, 
the sick man on his couch, the mother with her baby 
— all were dropping fast. Such sights as these, with 
the many rueful aggravations incident to the help- 
less condition of infancy — of disease and of female 
weakness abandoned to the wolves amidst a howling 
wilderness, continued to track their course through a 
space of full two thousand miles ; for so much, at the 
least, it was likely to prove, including the circuits to 
which they were often compelled by rivers or hostile 
tribes, from the point of starting on the Wolga, until 
they could reach their destined halting ground on the 
east bank of the Torgau. For the first seven weeks 
of this march their sufferings had been embittered by 
the excessive severity of the cold; and every night — 
so long as wood was to be had for fires, either from 
the lading of the camels, or from the desperate sacri- 
fice of their baggage-waggons, or (as occasionally hap- 
pened) from the forests which skirted the banks of the 
many rivers which crossed their path — no specta- 
cle was more frequent than that of a circle, composed 
of men, women, and children, gathered by hundreds 



50 DE QUINCEY. 

round a central fire, all dead and stiff at the return of 
morning light.^ Myriads were left behind from pure 
exhaustion, of whom none had a chance, under the 
combined evils which beset them, of surviving through 
the next twenty-four hours. Frost, however, and snow 
at length ceased to persecute ; the vast extent of the 
march at length brought them into more genial lati- 
tudes ; and the unusu^al duration of the march was 
gradually bringing them into more genial seasons 
of the year. Two thousand miles had at last been 
traversed ; February, March, April, were gone ; the 
balmy month of May had opened ; vernal sights and 
sounds came from every side to comfort the heart- 
weary travellers ; and at last, in the latter end of May, 
crossing the Torgau, they took up a position where 
they hoped to find libert}'^ to repose themselves for 
many weeks in comfort as well as ixi security, and 
to draw such supplies from the fertile neighbourhood 
as might restore their shattered forces to a condition 
for executing, with less of wreck and ruin, the large 
remainder of the journey. 

Yes : it was true that two thousand miles of wan- 
dering had been completed, but in a period of nearly 
five months, and with the terrific sacrifice of at least 
two hundred and fifty thousand souls, to say nothing 
of herds and flocks past all reckoning. These had 
all perished : ox, cow, horse, mule, ass, sheep, or goat, 
not one survived — only the camels. These arid and 
adust creatures, looking like the mummies of some 
antediluvian animals, without the affections or sensi- 

^ The historical accounts of the French retreat from Russia 
gave De Quincey this not improbable detail : " Every morning 
found the watch-fires surrounded with circles of the dead," we 
read. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 51 

bilities of flesh and blood — these only still erected 
their speaking eyes to the eastern heavens, and had to 
all appearance come out from this long tempest of 
trial unscathed and hardly diminished. The Khan, 
knowing how much he was individually answerable for 
the misery which had been sustained, must have wept 
tears even more bitter than those of Xerxes,^ when he 
threw his eyes over the myriads whom he had assem- 
bled : for the tears of Xerxes were unmingled with 
compunction. Whatever amends were in his power 
the Khan resolved to make, by sacrifices to the general 
good of .all personal regards ; and, accordingly, even 
at this point of their advance, he once more deliber- 
ately brought under review the whole question of the 
revolt. The question was formally debated before the 
Council, whether, even at this point, they should un- 
tread their steps, and, throwing themselves upon the 
Czarina's mercy, return to their old allegiance. In 
that case, Oubacha professed himself willing to become 
the scapegoat for the general transgression. This, he 
argued, was no fantastic scheme, but even easy of 
accomplishment ; for the unlimited and sacred power 
of the Khan, so well known to the Empress, made 
it absolutely iniquitous to attribute any separate re- 
sponsibility to the people — upon the Khan rested the 
guilt, upon the Khan would descend the imperial ven- 
geance. This proposal was applauded for its gener- 
osity, but was energetically opposed by Zebek-Dorchi. 
Were they to lose the whole journey of two thousand 

1 At the review of his hosts at Ahydos, b. c. 481, just hefore 
crossing the Hellespont for his great descent upon Greece, 
Xerxes, seeing " the water hidden by his ships and the prom- 
ontories and plains filled by his men, rejoiced ; and after that 
he wept." — Herodotus, book vii. chap. 45. 



52 DE QUINCE Y. 

miles? Was their misery to perish without fruit? 
True it was that they had yet reached only the half- 
way house ; but, in that respect, the motives were 
evenly balanced for retreat or for advance. Either 
way they would have pretty nearly the same distance 
to traverse, but with this difference — that, forwards, 
their route lay through lands comparatively fertile ; 
backwards, through a blasted wilderness, rich only in 
memorials of their sorrow, and hideous to Kalmuck 
eyes by the trophies of their calamity. Besides, though 
the Empress might accept an excuse for the past, would 
she the less forbear to suspect for the future? The 
Czarina's jiardon they might obtain, but could they 
ever hope to recover her confidence ? Doubtless 
there would now be a standing presumption against 
them, an immortal ground of jealousy ; and a jealous 
government would be but another name for a harsh 
one. Finally, whatever motives there ever had been 
for the revolt surely remained unimpaired by any- 
thing that had occurred. In reality, the revolt was, 
after all, no revolt, but (strictly speaking) a return to 
their old allegiance ; since, not above one hundred 
and fifty years ago (viz., in the year 1616 ^), their 
ancestors had revolted from the Emperor of China. 
They had now tried both governments ; and for them 
China was the land of promise, and Kussia the house 
of bondage. 

Spite, however, of all that Zebek could say or do, 
the yearning of the people was strongly in behalf of 
the Khan's proposal ; the pardon of their prince, they 
persuaded themselves, would be readily conceded by 
the Empress : and there is little doubt that they would 
at this time have thrown themselves gladly upon the 
^ Compare p. 3, note 2. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 53 

imperial mercy ; when suddenly all was defeated by 
the arrival of two envoys from Traubenberg. This 
general had reached the fortress of Orsk,^ after a very 
painful march, on the 12th of April ; thence he set 
forwards towards Oriembourg ; ^ which he reached 
upon the 1st of June, having been joined on his route 
at various times during the month of May by the Kir- 
ghises and a corps of ten thousand Bashkirs. From 
Oriemboui'g he sent forward his official offers to the 
Khan, which were harsh and peremptory, holding- 
out no specific stipulations as to pardon or impunity, 
and exacting vmconditional submission as the prelimi- 
nary price of any cessation from military operations. 
The personal character of Traubenberg, which was 
anything but energetic, and the condition of his army, 
disorganised in a great measure by the length and 
severity of the march, made it probable that, with a 
little time for negotiation, a more conciliatory tone 
would have been assumed. But, unhappily for all 
parties, sinister events occurred in the meantime, 
such as effectually put an end to every hope of the 
kind. 

The two envoys sent forward by Traubenberg had 
reported to this officer that a distance of only ten 
days' march lay between his own head-quarters and 
those of the Khan. Upon this fact transpiring,^ the 
Kirghises, by their prince Nourali, and the Bashkirs, 
entreated the Russian general to advance without 
delay. Once having placed ^ his cannon in position, 
so as to command the Kalmuck camp, the fate of the 

^ On the Or, near the Ural, River. 

2 Fort Orenburg on the Turgai must be meant ; not the large 
town, which is west of Orsk. 

* What of this phrase grammatically ? 



54 DE QUINCEY. 

rebel Khan and his people would be in his own 
hands : and they would themselves foi-m his advanced 
guard. Traubenberg, however (^why has not been 
certainly explained), refused to march, grounding his 
refusal upon the condition of his army, and their 
absolute need of refreshment. Long and fierce was 
the altercation ; but at length, seeing no chance of 
prevailing, and dreading above all other events the 
escape of their detested enemy, the ferocious Bash- 
kirs went off in a body by forced marches. In six 
days they reached the Torgau, crossed by swimming 
their horses, and fell upon the Kalmucks, who were 
dispersed for many a league in search of food or 
provender for their camels. The first day's action 
was one vast succession of independent skirmishes, 
diffused over a field of thirty to forty miles in extent ; 
one party often breaking up into three or four, and 
again (according to the accidents of ground) three 
or four blending into one ; flight and pursuit, rescue 
and total overthrow, going on simultaneously, under 
all varieties of form, in all quarters of the plain. 
The Bashkirs had found themselves obliged, by the 
scattered state of the Kalmucks, to split up into in- 
numerable sections ; and thus, for some hours, it 
had been impossible for the most practised eye to 
collect the general tendency of the day's fortune. 
Both the Khan and Zebek-Dorchi were at one mo- 
ment made prisoners, and more than once in im- 
minent danger of being cut down ; but at length 
Zebek succeeded in rallying a strong column of in- 
fantry, which, with the support of the camel corps 
on each flank, compelled the Bashkirs to retreat. 
Clouds, however, of these wild cavalry continued to 
arrive through the next two days and nights, followed 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 55 

or accompanied by the Kirghises. These being 
viewed as the advanced parties of Traubenberg's 
army, the Kahnuck chieftains saw no hope of safety 
but in flight ; and in this way it happened that a re- 
treat, which had so recently been brought to a pause, 
was resumed at the very moment when the unhappy 
fugitives were anticipating a deep repose without fur- 
ther molestation the whole summer through. 

It seemed as though every variety of wretchedness 
were predestined to the Kalmucks, and as if their 
sufferings were incomplete unless they were rounded 
and matured by all that the most dreadful agencies 
of summer's heat could superadd to those of frost 
and winter. To this sequel of their story I shall im- 
mediately revert, after first noticing a little romantic 
episode ^ which occurred at this point between Ouba- 
cha and his unprincipled cousin Zebek-Dorchi. 

There was at the time of the Kalmuck flight from 
the Wolga a Russian gentleman of some rank at the 
court of the Khan, whom, for political reasons, it was 
thought necessary to carry along with them as a cap- 
tive. For some weeks his confinement had been very 
strict, and in one or two instances cruel. But, as the 
increasing distance was continually diminishing the 
chances of escape, and perhaps, also, as the misery 
of the guards gradually withdrew their attention from 
all minor interests to their own personal sufferings, 
the vigilance of the custody grew more and more re- 
laxed ; until at length, upon a petition to the Khan, 
Mr. Weseloff was formally restored to liberty ; and it 

^ The saving of Oubaeha's life is De Quincey's addition, but 
the story of Weseloff's journey is Bergmann's ; indeed, it is 
upon WeselofE's oral evidence that Bergmann's narrative largely 
rests. 



56 DE QUINCE Y. 

was understood that he might use his liberty in what- 
ever way he chose, even for returning to Russia, if 
that shoukl be his wish. Accordingly, he was making 
active preparations for his journey to St. Petersburg, 
when it occurred to Zebek-Dorchi that, not improba- 
bly, in some of the battles which were then anticipated 
with Traubenberg, it might happen to them to lose 
some prisoner of rank, in which case the Russian 
Weseloft' would be a pledge in their hands for nego- 
tiating an exchange. Upon this plea, to his own 
severe affliction, the Russian was detained until the 
further pleasure of the Khan. The Khan's name, 
indeed, was used through the whole affair ; but, as It 
seemed, with so little concurrence on his part, that, 
when Weseloff In a private audience humbly remon- 
strated upon the injustice done him, and the cruelty 
of thus sporting with his feelings by setting him at 
liberty, and, as It were, tempting him into dreams of 
home and restored happiness only for the purpose of 
blighting them, the good-natured prince disclaimed all 
participation in the affair, and went so far In proving 
his sincerity as even to give him permission to effect 
his escape ; and, as a ready means of commencing It 
without raising suspicion, the Khan mentioned to Mr. 
Weseloff that he had just then received a message 
from the Hetman of the Bashkirs, soliciting a pri- 
vate interview on the banks of the Torgau at a spot 
pointed out : that interview was arranged for the com- 
ing night ; and Mr. Weseloff might go in the Khan's 
siiite, which on either side was not to exceed three 
persons. Weseloff was a prudent man, acquainted 
with the world, and he read treachery in the very out- 
line of this scheme, as stated by the Khan — treachery 
against the Khan's person. He mused a little, and 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 57 

tiien communicated so much of his suspicions to the 
Khan as might put him on his guard ; but, upon 
further consideration, he begged leave to decline the 
honour of accouipanying the Khan. The fact was that 
three Kalmucks, who had strong motives for returning* 
to their countrymen on the west bank of the Wolga, 
guessing the intentions of Weseloff, had offered to 
join him in his escape. These men the Khan would 
probably find himself obliged to countenance in their 
project ; so that it became a point of honour with Wes- 
eloff to conceal their intentions, and therefore to ac- 
complish the evasion from the camp (of which the 
first steps only would be hazaixlous) without risking- 
the notice of the Khan. 

The district in which they were now encamped 
abounded through many hundred miles with wild 
horses of a docile and beautiful breed. Each of the 
four fugitives had caught from seven to ten of these 
spirited creatures in the course of the last few days : 
this raised no suspicion, for the rest of the Kalmucks 
had been making the same sort of provision against 
the coming toils of their remaining rovite to China. 
These horses were secured by halters, and hidden 
about dusk in the thickets which lined the margin of 
the river. To these thickets, about ten at night, the 
four fugitives repaired ; they took a circuitous path, 
which drew them as little as possible within danger of 
challenge from any of the outposts or of the patrols 
which had been established on the quarters where the 
Bashkirs lay ; and in three-quarters of an hour they 
reached the rendezvous. The moon had now risen, 
the horses were unfastened, and they were in the act 
of mounting, when suddenly the deep silence of the 
woods was disturbed by a violent uproar and the clash- 



58 DE QUINCE Y. 

ing of arms. Weseloff fancied that he heard the voice 
of the Khan shouting for assistance. He remembered 
the communication made by that prince in the morn- 
ing ; and, requesting his companions to support him, 
he rode off in the direction of the sound. A very short 
distance brought him to an open glade within the wood, 
where he beheld four men contending with a party of 
at least nine or ten. Two of the four were dismounted 
at the very instant of Weseloff's arrival ; one of these 
he recognised almost certainly as the Khan, who was 
fighting hand to hand, but at great disadvantage, with 
two of the adverse horsemen. Seeing that no time 
was to be lost, Weseloff fired and brought down one 
of the two. His companions discharged their carbines 
at the same moment, and then all rushed simultane- 
ously into the little open area. The thundering sound 
of about thirty horses all rushing at once into nar- 
row space gave the impression that a whole troop 
of cavalry was coming down upon the assailants, who 
accordingly wheeled about and fled with one impulse. 
Weseloff advanced to the dismounted cavalier, who, 
as he expected, proved to be the Khan. The man 
whom Weseloff had shot was lying dead ; and both 
were shocked, though Weseloff at least was not sur- 
prised, on stooping down and scrutinising his features, 
to recognise a well-known confidential servant of Ze- 
bek-Dorchi. Nothing was said by either party ; the 
Khan rode off escorted by Weseloff' and his com- 
panions, and for some time a dead silence prevailed. 
The situation of Weseloff was delicate and critical ; 
to leave the Khan at this point was probably to cancel 
their recent services ; for he might be again crossed 
on his path, and again attacked by the very party 
from whom he had just been delivered. Yet, on the 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 59 

other hand, to return to the camp was to endanger 
the chances of accomplishing the escape. The Khan, 
also, was apparently revolving all this in his mind, for 
at length he broke silence, and said, " I comprehend 
your situation ; and under other circumstances I might 
feel it my duty to detain your companions. But it 
would ill become me to do so after the important ser- 
vice you have just rendered me. Let us turn a little 
to the left. There, where you see the watch-fire, is an 
outpost. Attend me so far. I am then safe. You 
may turn and pursue your enterprise ; for the circum- 
stances under which you will appear, as my escort, 
are sufficient to shield you from all suspicion for the 
present. I regret having no better means at my dis- 
posal for testifying my gratitude. But tell me before 
we part — Was it accident only which led you to my 
rescue ? Or had you acquired any knowledge of the 
plot by which I was decoyed into this snare ? " Wes- 
eloff answered very candidly that mere accident had 
brought him to the spot at which he heard the uproar, 
but that, having heard it, and connecting it with the 
Khan's communication of the morning, he had then 
designedly gone after the sound in a way which he 
certainly should not have done at so critical a moment, 
unless in the expectation of finding the Khan assaulted 
by assassins. A few minutes after they reached the 
outpost at which it became safe to leave the Tar- 
tar chieftain ; and immediately the four fugitives com- 
menced a flight which is perhaps without a parallel in 
the annals of travelling. Each of them led six or seven 
horses besides the one he rode ; and, by shifting from 
one to the other (like the ancient Desultors ^ of the 
Roman circus), so as never to burden the same horse 
^ Consult a classical dictionary. 



60 DE QUINCE Y. 

for more than half an hour at a time, they continued 
to advance at the rate of 200 miles in the 24 hours for 
three days consecutively. After that time, conceiving 
themselves beyond pursuit, they proceeded less rapidly ; 
though still with a velocity which staggered the belief 
of Weseloff's friends in after years. He was, however, 
a man of high principle, and always adhered firmly to 
the details of his printed report. One of the circum- 
stances there stated is that they continued to pursue 
the route by which the Kalmucks had fled, never for 
an instant finding any difficulty in tracing it by the 
skeletons and other memorials of their calamities. In 
particular, he mentions vast heaps of money as part of 
the valuable property which it had been found neces- 
sary to sacrifice. These heaps were found lying still 
untouched in the deserts. From these Weseloff and 
his companions took as much as they could conven- 
iently carry ; and this it was, with the price of their 
beautiful horses, which they afterwards sold at one of 
the Russian military settlements for about £15 apiece, 
which eventually enabled them to pursue their journey 
in Russia. This journey, as regarded Weseloff in par- 
ticular, was closed by a tragical catastrophe. He was 
at that time young, and the only child of a doating^ 
mother. Her affliction under the violent abduction of 
her son had been excessive, and probably had under- 
mined her constitution. Still she had supported it. 
Weseloif, giving way to the natural impulses of his 
filial aifection, had imprudently posted through Russia 
to his mother's house without warning of his approach. 
He rushed precipitately into her presence ; and she, 
who had stood the shocks of sorrow, was found unequal 
to the shock of joy too sudden and too acute. She 
died upon the spot. 

1 What is the spelling now ? 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 61 

I now revert to the final scenes of the Kalmuck 
flight. These it would be useless to pursue circum- 
stantially through the whole two thousand miles of 
suffering which remained ; for the character of that 
suffering was even more monotonous than on the for- 
mer half of the flight, and also more severe. Its main 
elements were excessive heat, with the accompaniments 
of famine and thirst, but aggravated at every step by 
the murderous attacks of their cruel enemies, the Bash- 
kirs and the Kirghises. 

These people, " more fell than anguish, hunger, or 
the sea," ^ stuck to the unhappy Kalmucks like a swarm 
of enraged hornets. And very often, whilst they were 
attacking them in the rear, their advanced parties and 
flanks were attacked with almost equal fury by the 
people of the country which they were traversing ; and 
with good reason, since the law of self-preservation had 
now obliged the fugitive Tartars to plunder provisions, 
and to forage wherever they passed. In this respect 
their condition was a constant oscillation of wretched- 
ness ; for sometimes, pressed by grinding famine, they 
took a circuit of perhaps a hundred miles, in order 
to strike into a land rich in the comforts of life ; but 
in such a land they were sure to find a crowded popu- 
lation, of which every arm was raised in unrelenting 
hostility, with all the advantages of local knowledge, 
and with constant preoccupation of all the defensible 
positions, mountain passes, or bridges. Sometimes, 
again, wearied out with this mode of suffering, they 
took a circuit of perhaps a hundred miles, in order to 
strike into a land with few or no inhabitants. But in 
such a land they were sure to meet absolute starvation. 
Then, again, whether with or without this plague of 
^ From Othello, last speech. 



62 DE QUINCE Y. 

starvation, whether with or without this plague of 
hostility in front, whatever might be the " fierce va- 
rieties " of their misery in this respect, no rest ever 
came to their unhappy rear ; post equitem sedet citra 
Gura ; ^ it was a torment like the undying worm ^ of con- 
science. And, upon the whole, it presented a specta- 
cle altogether unprecedented in the history of mankind. 
Private and personal malignity is not unfrequently 
immortal ; but rare indeed is it to find the same perti- 
nacity of malice in a nation. And what embittered the 
interest was that the malice was reciprocal. Thus far 
the parties met upon equal terms ; but that equality 
only sharpened the sense of their dire inequality as 
to other circumstances. The Bashkirs were ready to 
fight " from morn to dewy eve." ^ The Kalmucks, on 
the contrary, were always obliged to run. Was \ifroin 
their enemies as creatures whom they feared ? No ; 
but towards their friends — towards that final haven of 
China — as what was hourly implored by the prayers 
of their wives, and the tears of their children. But, 
though they fled unwillingly, too often they fled in vain 
— being unwillingly recalled. There lay the torment. 
Every day the Bashkirs fell upon them ; every day the 
same unprofitable battle was renewed ; as a matter of 
course, the Kalmucks recalled part of their advanced 
guard to fight them ; every day the battle raged for 
hours, and uniformly with the same result. For no 
sooner did the Bashkirs find themselves too heavily 
pressed, and that the Kalmuck march had been re- 
tarded by some hours, than they retired into the bound- 

^ Horace, Odes, book iii. line 40. 

■^ Isaiah Ixvi. 24. A favorite plirase with De Quincey. 
8 Paradise Lost, book i. lines 742-3, has : " From morn to 
noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve." 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 63 

less deserts, where all pursuit was hopeless. But, if 
the Kalmucks resolved to press forward, regardless of 
their enemies, in that case their attacks became so 
fierce and overwhelming that the general safety seemed 
likely to be brought into question ; nor could any effec- 
tual remedy be applied to the case, even for each sepa- 
rate day, except by a most embarrassing halt, and by 
countermarches that, to men in their circumstances, 
were almost worse than death. It will not be surpris- 
ing that the irritation of such a systematic persecution, 
superadded to a previous and hereditary hatred, and 
accompanied by the stinging consciousness of utter 
impotence as regarded all effectual vengeance, should 
gradually have inflamed the Kalmuck animosity into 
the wildest expression of downright madness and 
frenzy. Indeed, long before the frontiers of China 
were approached, the hostility of both sides had as- 
sumed the appeai'ance much more of a warfare 
amongst wild beasts than amongst creatures acknow- 
ledging the restraints of reason or the claims of a com- 
mon nature. The spectacle became too atrocious ; it 
was that of a host of Imiatics pursued by a host of 
fiends. 



On a fine morning in early autumn of the year 1771, 
Kien Long, the Emperor of China, was pursuing his 
amusements in a wild frontier district lying on the 
outside of the Great Wall. For many hundred square 
leagues the country was desolate of inhabitants, but 
rich in woods of ancient growth, and overrun with 
game of every description. In a central spot of this 
solitary region the Emperor had built a gorgeous 
hunting lodge, to which he resorted annually for re- 



64 DE QUINCE Y. 

creation and relief from the cares of government. 
Led onwards in pursuit of game, lie had rambled to a 
distance of 200 miles or more from this lodge, followed 
at a little distance by a sufficient military escort, and 
every night pitching his tent in a different situation, 
until at length he had arrived on the very margin of 
the vast central deserts of Asia.^ Here he was stand- 
ing by accident at an opening of his pavilion, enjoying 
the morning sunshine, when suddenly to the westwards 
there arose a vast, cloudy vapour, which by degrees 
expanded, mounted, and seemed to be slowly diffusing 
itself over the whole face of the heavens. By and by 
this vast sheet of mist began to thicken towards the 
horizon, and to roll forward in billowy volumes. The 
Emperor's suite assembled from all quarters. The silver 
trumpets were sounded in the rear, and from all the 
glades and forest avenues began to trot forward towards 
the pavilion the yagers ^ — half cavalry, half huntsmen 

1 All the circumstances are learned from a long state paper 
upon the subject of this Kalmuck migration drawn up in the 
Chinese language by the Emperor himself. Parts of this paper 
have been translated by the Jesuit missionaries. The Emperor 
states the whole motives of his conduct and the chief incidents 
at great length. — De Quincey's Note. All De Quincey knew 
of this paper was evidently what he found in Bergmann's foot- 
notes. But the imaginative conception of this scene, and its 
eloquent treatment by De Quincey, make it perhaps the best 
object for rhetorical study in the whole paper ; it may be com- 
pared with the famous passages in the " Confessions " and 
"Mail-Coach." 

- De Quincey no doubt seizes upon this word (which means in 
German first " huntsmen," afterwards army " riflemen ") as serv- 
ing his turn ; since the Emperor needed both a military escort, 
and a following of huntsmen. The existence of such a branch 
of the Chinese army is, after all, not more improbable than the 
presence of the Emperor and his attendants on this occasion. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 65 

— who composed the imperial escort. Conjecture was 
on the stretch to divine the cause of this phenomenon, 
and the interest continually increased, in proportion as 
simple curiosity gradually deepened into the anxiety 
of uncertain danger. At first it had been imagined 
that some vast troojjs of deer, or other wild animals of 
the chase, had been disturbed in their forest haunts by 
the Emperor's movements, or possibly by wild beasts 
prowling for prey, and might be fetching a compass 
by way of re-entering the forest grounds at some 
remoter points secure from molestation. But this 
conjecture was dissipated by the slow increase of the 
cloud, and the steadiness of its motion. In the course 
of two hours the vast phenomenon had advanced to a 
point which was judged to be within five miles of the 
spectators, though all calculations of distance were 
difficult, and often fallacious, when applied to the end- 
less expanses of the Tartar deserts. Through the next 
hour, during which the gentle* morning breeze had a 
little freshened, the dusty vapour had developed itself 
far and wide into the appearance of huge aerial dra- 
peries, hanging in mighty volumes from the sky to the 
eartli ; and at particular points, where the eddies of 
the breeze acted upon the pendulous skirts of these 
aerial curtains, rents were perceived, sometimes tak- 
ing the form of regular arches, portals, and windows, 
through which began dimly to gleam the heads of 
camels "indorsed"^ with human beings — and at in- 
tervals the moving of men and horses in tumultuous 
array — and then through other openings or vistas at 
far distant jjoints the flashing of polished arms. But 

1 And elephants indorsed icith towers. — Milton in Paradise 
Regained [iii. 329]. — De Quincey's Note. Can De Quincey's 
use of this word and of " trashed " (p. 44) be defended ? 



66 DE QUINCE Y. 

sometimes, as the wind slackened or died away, all 
those openings, of whatever form, in the cloudy pall 
would slowly close, and for a time the whole pageant 
was shut up from view ; although the growing din, 
the clamours, shrieks and groans, ascending from in- 
furiated myriads, reported, in a language not to be 
misunderstood, what was going on behind the cloudy 
screen. 

It was in fact the Kalmuck host, now in the last 
extremities of their exhaustion, and very fast approach- 
ing to that final stage of privation and killing misery 
beyond which few or none could have lived, but also, 
happily for themselves, fast approaching (in a literal 
sense) that final stage of their long pilgrimage at which 
they would meet hospitality on a scale of royal magnifi- 
cence, and full protection from their enemies. These 
enemies, however, as yet, were still hanging on their 
rear as fiercely as ever, though this day was destined 
to be the last of their hideous persecution. The Khan 
had, in fact, sent forward couriers with all the requisite 
statements and petitions ^ addressed to the Emperor of 
China. These had been duly received, and prepara- 
tions made in consequence to welcome the Kalmucks 
with the most paternal benevolence. But, as these 
couriers had been despatched from the Torgau at the 
moment of arrival thither, and before the advance of 
Traubenberg had made it necessary for the Khan to 
order a hasty renewal of the flight, the Emperor had 
not looked for their arrival on his frontiers until full 
three months after the present time. The Khan had 
indeed expressly notified his intention to pass the sum- 
mer heats on the banks of the Torgau, and to recom- 
mence his retreat about the beginning of September. 

1 Cf. p. 22, note 1, and p. 7, note 1. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 67 

The subsequent change of plan, being unknown toKien 
Long, left him for some time in doubt as to the true 
interpretation to be put upon this mighty apparition 
in the desert ; but at length the savage clamours of 
hostile fniy, and the clangour ^ of weapons, unveiled 
to the Emperor the true nature of those unexpected 
calamities which had so prematurely precipitated the 
Kalmuck measures. 

Apprehending the real state of affairs, the Emperor 
instantly perceived that the first act of his fatherly 
care for these erring children (as he esteemed them), 
now returning to their ancient obedience, must be — 
to deliver them from their pursuers. And this was 
less difficult than might have been supposed. Not 
many miles in the rear was a body of well-appointed 
cavalry, with a strong detachment of artillery, who 
always attended the Emperor's motions. These were 
hastily summoned. Meantime it occurred to the train 
of courtiers that some danger might arise to the Em- 
peror's person fi-om the proximity of a lawless enemy ; 
and accordingly he was induced to retire a little to the 
rear. It soon appeared, however, to those who watched 
the vapoury shroud in the desert, that its motion was 
not such as would argue the direction of the march to 
be exactly upon the pavilion, but rather in a diago- 
nal line, making an angle of full 45 degrees with that 
line in which the imperial cortege had been standing, 
and therefore with a distance continually increasing. 
Those who knew the country judged that the Kalmucks 
were making for a large fresh-water lake about seven 
or eight miles distant. They were right ; and to that 

1 Dryden, Song for St. Cecilia's Day, has : " The trumpet's 
loud clangour excites us to arms." Is De Quincey's or Drydeu's 
use of the word connect ? See Latin dictionary. 



68 DE QUINCE Y. 

point the imperial cavalry was ordered up ; and it was 
precisely in that spot, and about three hours after, and 
at noonday on the 8th of September, that the great 
Exodus of the Kalmuck Tartars was brought to a final 
close, and with a scene of such memorable and hellish 
fury as formed an appropriate winding up to an expe- 
dition in all its parts and details so awfully disastrous. 
The Emperor was not personally present, or at least he 
saw whatever he did see from too great a distance 
to discriminate its individual features ; but he records 
in his written memorial the report made to him of this 
scene by some of his own officers. 

The Lake of Tengis,^ near the dreadful desert of 
Kobi, lay in a hollow amongst hills of a moderate 
height, ranging generally from two to three thousand 
feet high. About eleven o'clock in the forenoon, the 
Chinese cavalry reached the summit of a road which led 
through a cradle-like dip in the mountains right down 
upon the margin of the lake. From this pass, ele- 
vated about two thousand feet above the level of the 
water, they continued to descend, by a very winding 
and difficult road, for an hour and a half ; and during 
the whole of this descent they were compelled to be in- 
active spectators of the fiendish spectacle below. The 
Kalmucks, reduced by this time from about six hun- 
dred thousand souls to two hundred and sixty thou- 
sand,^ and after enduring for so long a time the mis- 
eries I have previously described — outrageous heat, 
famine, and the destroying scimitar of the Kirghises 
and the Bashkirs — had for the last ten days been trav- 

1 Lake Balkhash must be meant ; Dengiz or Tengiz will be 
found on the maps as one of the names of many lakes ; it is 
said to mean " lake." 

2 Cf. prefatory note. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 69 

ersing a hideous desert, where no vestiges were seen of 
vegetation, and no drop of water could be found. Cam- 
els and men were already so overladen that it was a 
mere impossibility that they should carry a tolerable 
sufficiency for the passage of this frightful wilderness. 
On the eighth day, the wretched daily allowance, which 
had been continually diminishing, failed entirely ; and 
thus, for two days of insupportable fatigue, the horrors 
of thirst had been carried to the fiercest extremity. 
Upon this last morning, at the sight of the hills and the 
forest scenery, which announced to those who acted as 
guides the neighbourhood of the Lake of Tengis, all the 
people rushed along with maddening eagerness to the 
anticipated solace. The day grew hotter and hotter, 
the people more and more exhausted, and gradually, 
in the general rush forwards to the lake, all discipline 
and command were lost — all attempts to preserve a 
rearguard were neglected — the wild Bashkirs rode in 
amongst the encumbered people, and slaughtered them 
by wholesale, and almost without resistance. Screams 
and tumultuous shouts proclaimed the progress of the 
massacre ; but none heeded — none halted ; all alike, 
pauper or noble, continued to rush on with maniacal 
haste to the waters — all with faces blackened by the 
heat preying upon the liver, and with tongue droop- 
ing from the mouth. The cruel Bashkir was affected 
by the same misery, and manifested the same symp- 
toms of his misery, as the wretched Kalmuck ; the 
murderer was oftentimes in the same frantic misery as 
his murdered victim — many indeed (an ordinary effect 
of thirst) in both nations had become lunatic, and in 
this state, whilst mere multitude and condensation of 
bodies alone opposed any check to the destroying 
scimitar and the trampling hoof, the lake was reached ; 



70 DE QUINCEY. 

and into tliat the whole vast body of enemies rushed, 
and together continued to rush, forgetful of all things 
at that moment but of one almighty instinct. This 
absorption of the thoughts in one maddening appe- 
tite lasted for a single half-hour ; but in the next 
arose the final scene of parting vengeance. Far and 
wide the waters of the solitary lake were instantly dyed 
red with blood and gore : here rode a party of savage 
Bashkirs, hewing off heads as fast as the swathes fall 
before the mower's scythe ; there stood unarmed Kal- 
mucks in a death-grapple with their detested foes, both 
up to the middle in water, and oftentimes both sinking 
together below the surface, from weakness or from 
struggles, and perishing in each other's arms. Did 
the Bashkirs at any point collect into a cluster for the 
sake of giving impetus to the assault ? Thither were 
the camels driven in fiercely by those who rode them, 
generally women or boys ; and even these quiet crea- 
tures were forced into a share in this carnival of mur- 
der, by trampling ^ down as many as they could strike 
prostrate with the lash of tbeir fore-legs. Every mo- 
ment the water grew more polluted ; and yet every 
moment fresh myriads came up to the lake and rushed 
in, not able to resist their frantic thirst, and swallow- 
ing lai-ge draughts of water visibly contaminated with 
the blood of their slaughtered compatriots. Where- 
soever the lake was shallow enough to allow of men 
raising 1 their heads above the water, there, for scores 
of acres, were to be seen all forms of ghastly fear, of 
agonising struggle, of spasm, of death, and the fear 
of death — revenge, and the lunacy of revenge — until 
the neutral spectators, of whom there were not a few, 

1 Is there not a question of grammatical correctness here ? 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 71 

now descending tlie eastern side of the lake, at length 
averted their eyes in horror. This horror, which 
seemed incapable of further addition, was, however, 
increased by an unexpected incident. The Bashkirs, 
beginning to perceive here and there the approach of 
the Chinese cavalry, felt it prudent — wheresoever 
they were sufficiently at leisure from the passions of 
the murderous scene — to gather into bodies. This 
was noticed by the governor of a small Chinese fort, 
built upon an eminence above the lake ; and imme- 
diately he threw in a broadside, which spread havoc 
amongst the Bashkir tribe. As often as the Bashkirs 
collected into "■ globes " and " tur7ns,^' ^ as their only 
means of meeting the long line of descending Chi- 
nese cavalry — so often did the Chinese governor of 
the fort pour in his exterminating broadside ; until 
at length the lake, at its lower end, became one vast 
seething caldron of human bloodshed and carnage. 
The Chinese cavalry had reached the foot of the 
hills: the Bashkirs, attentive to tlieir movements, had 
formed ; skirmishes had been fought : and, with a 
quick sense that the contest was hencef orwards rapidly 
becoming hopeless, the Bashkirs and Kirghises began 
to retire. The pursuit was not as vigorous as the Kal- 
muck hatred would have desired. But, at the same 
time, the very gloomiest hatred could not but find, 
in their own dreadful experience of the Asiatic des- 
erts, and in the certainty that these wretched Bashkirs 
had to repeat that same experience a second time, for 
thousands of miles, as the price exacted by a retrib- 
utory Providence for their vindictive cruelty — not 

^ Words barbarously adapted from the Latin military terms, 
which see. Of course the whole scene is a product of the fancy. 



72 DE QUINCEY. 

the very gloomiest of the Kalmucks, or the least re- 
flecting, bilt found in all this a retaliatory chastisement 
more complete and absolute than any which their 
swords and lances could have obtained, or human 
vengeance could have devised. 

Here ends the tale of the Kalmuck wanderings in 
the Desert ; for any subsequent marches which awaited 
them were neither long nor painful. Every possible 
alleviation and refreshment for their exhausted bodies 
had been already provided by Kien Long with the 
most princely munificence ; and lands of great fertility 
were immediately assigned to them in ample extent 
along the river Ily, not very far from the point at 
which they had first emerged from the wilderness of 
Kobi. But the beneficent attention of the Chinese 
Emperor may be best stated in his own words, as 
translated into French by one of the Jesuit mission- 
aries : — " La nation des Torgotes Qsavoir les Kal- 
Tnuques) arriva a Ily, toute delabree, n'ayant ni de quoi 
vivre, ni de quoi se vetir. Je I'avais pr^vu ; et j 'avals 
ordonne de faire en tout genre les provisions neces- 
saires pour pouvoir les secourir promptement : c'est 
ce qui a ete execute. On a fait la division des terres ; 
et on a assign^ a chaque famille une portion suffisante 
pour pouvoir servir a son entretien, soit en la culti- 
vant, soit en y nourissant des bestiaux. On a donne 
a chaque particulier des etoffes pour I'habiller, des 
grains pour se nourrir pendant I'espace d'une annee, 
des ustensiles pour le menage, et d'autres choses neces- 
saires : et outre cela plusieurs onces d'argent, pour se 
pourvoir de ce qu'on aurait pu oublier. On a designe 
des lieux particuliers, fertiles en paturages ; et on leur 
a donne des boeufs, moutons, etc., pour qu'ils pussent 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 73 

dans la suite travailler par eux-memes a leur entretien 
et a leur bien-etre." ^ 

These are the words of the Emperor himself, 
speaking in his own person of his own paternal cares ; 
but another Chinese, treating the same subject, records 
the munificence of this prince in terms which proclaim 
still more forcibly the disinterested generosity which 
prompted, and the delicate considerateness which con- 
ducted, this extensive bounty. He has been speaking 
of the Kalmucks, and he goes on thus : — " Lorsqu'ils 
arriverent sur nos frontieres (au nombre de plusieurs 
centaines de mille, quoique la fatigue extreme, la faim, 
la soif, et toutes les autres incommodites inseparables 
d'une tres-longue et tres penible route en eussent fait 
perir presque autant), ils etaient reduits a la derniere 
misere ; ils manquaient de tout. II " [viz., I'Em- 
pereur, Kien Long] " leur fit preparer des logemens 
conformes a leur maniei'e de vivre ; il leur fit distribuer 
des alimens et des habits ; il leur fit donner des boeufs, 
des moutons, et des ustensiles, pour les mettre en etat 
de former des troupeaux et de cultiver la terre, et tout 

^ The nation of the Torgotes (that is to say the Kalmucks) 
reached the lly quite shattered, having neither food to eat nor 
clothes to wear. I had foreseen this ; and I had caused to be 
made every kind of preparation necessary for their speedy relief : 
which was done. A distribution of lands was made ; and to 
each family was assigned a portion sufficient to serve for its 
maintenance, whether by cultivating it or feeding cattle on it. 
To each individual were given materials for clothing, corn for 
his sustenance for the space of a year, utensils for the house- 
hold, and other things necessary : and besides this, several 
ounces of silver to provide himself with anything that might 
have been forgotten. Particular pieces of land were appointed 
for them, fertile in pasturage ; and cattle and sheep, etc., were 
given them, that they might in the future be able to work for 
their own support and well-being. 



74 DE QUINCE Y. 

cela a ses propres frais, qui se sont monies a des 
sommes immenses, sans compter I'argent qu'il a clonn^ 
a chaque clief-cle-f amille, pour poui'voir a la subsistance 
de sa femnie et de ses enfans." ^ 

Thus, after their memorable year of misery, the 
Kalmucks were replaced in territorial possessions, and 
in comfort equal perhaps, or even superior, to that 
which they had enjoyed in Russia, and with superior 
political advantages. But, if equal or superior, their 
condition was no longer the same ; if not in degree, 
their social prosperity had altered in quality ; for, 
instead of being a purely pastoral and vagrant people, 
they were now in circumstances which obliged them 
to become essentially dependent upon agriculture ; 
and thus far raised in social rank, that, by the natural 
course of their habits and the necessities of life, they 
were effectually reclaimed from roving and from the 
savage customs connected with a half nomadic life. 
They gained also in political privileges, chiefly through 
the immunity from military service which their new 
relations enabled them to obtain. These were circum- 
stances of advantage and gain. But one great dis- 

' When they reached our frontiers (to the number of some 
hundreds of thousands, although extreme fatigue, hunger, thirst, 
and all the other hardships inseparable from a very long and very 
wearisome march had brought almost as many to their death) 
they were reduced to the last stage of wretchedness ; they were 
utterly destitute. He [viz., the Emperor, Kien Long] had hab- 
itations prepared for them suitable to their mode of life ; he 
caused food and clothing to be distributed to them ; he had 
cattle and sheep given them, and implements to put them in a 
condition to form herds and cultivate the land, and all at his 
own charges, which reached immense sums, without counting 
the money which he gave to each head of a family, to provide 
for the support of his wife and children. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 75 

advantage there was, amply to overbalance all other 
possible gain : the chances were lost or were removed 
to an incalculable distance for their conversion to 
Christianity, without which, in these times, there is no 
absolute advance possible on the path of true civ- 
ilisation. 

One word remains to be said upon the 'personal 
interests concerned in this great drama. The catas- 
trophe in this respect was remarkable and complete. 
Oubacha, with all his goodness and incapacity of sus- 
pecting, had, since the mysterious affair on the banks 
of the Torgau, felt his mind alienated from his cousin ; 
he revolted from the man that would have murdered 
him ; and he had displayed his caution so visibly as 
to provoke a reaction in the bearing of Zebek-Dorchi, 
and a displeasure which all his dissimulation could not 
hide. This had produced a feud, which, by keeping 
them aloof, had probably saved the life of Oubacha ; 
for the friendship of Zebek-Dorchi was more fatal than 
his open enmity. After the settlement on the Ily this 
feud continued to advance, until it came under the 
notice of the Emperor, on occasion of a visit which 
all the Tartar chieftains made to his Majesty at his 
hunting lodge in 1772. The Emperor informed him- 
self accurately of all the particulars connected with 
the transaction — of all the rights and claims put 
forward — and of the way in which they would sever- 
ally affect the interests of the Kalmuck people. The 
consequence was that he adopted the cause of Oubacha, 
and repressed the pretensions of Zebek-Dorchi, who, 
on his part, so deeply resented this discountenance to 
his ambitious projects, that, in conjunction with other 
chiefs, he had the presumption even to weave nets of 
treason against the Emperor himself. Plots were laid, 



76 DE QUINCE Y. 

were detected, were baffled ; counterplots were con- 
structed upon the same basis, and with the benefit of 
the opportunities thus offered. 

Finally, Zebek-Dorchi was invited to the imperial 
lodge, together with all his accomplices; and, under 
the skilful management of the Chinese nobles in the 
Emperor's establishment, the murderous artifices of 
these Tartar chieftains were made to recoil upon them- 
selves ; and the whole of them perished by assassina- 
tion at a great imperial banquet. For the Chinese 
morality is exactly of that kind which approves in 
every thing the lex talionis :^ — 

" Lex nee jiistior ulla est (as they think) 



Quam necis artifices arte perire sua." 

So perished Zebek-Dorchi, the author and origina- 
tor of the great Tartar Exodus. Oubacha, meantime, 
and his people, were gradually recovering from the 
effects of their misery, and repairing their losses. 
Peace and prosperity, under the gentle rule of a 
fatherly lord paramount, redawned upon the tribes : 
their household lares^ after so harsh a translation to 
distant climes, found again a happy reinstatement in 
what had, in fact, been their primitive abodes : they 
found themselves settled in quiet sylvan scenes, rich 
in all the luxuries of life, and endowed with the per- 
fect loveliness of Arcadian ^ beauty. But from the hills 
of this favoured land, and even from the level grounds 
as they approached its western border, they still look 
out upon that fearful wilderness which once beheld a 

^ Law of retaliation. The quotation following is taken a little 
inaccurately from Ovid, Ara Amaioria i. 655-6: "No law is 
more just than that the devisers of murder should perish by 
their own device." Cf. Hamlet iii. 4, lines 206-7. 

^ See a classical dictionary. 



FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE. 11 

nation in agony — the utter extirpation of nearly half 
a million from amongst its numbers, and, for the 
remainder, a storm of misery ^ so fierce that in the end 
(as happened also at Athens ^ during the Peloponne- 
sian War from a different form of misery) very many 
lost their memory ; all records of their past life were 
wiped out as with a sponge — utterly erased and can- 
celled : and many others lost their reason ; some in a 
gentle form of pensive melancholy, some in a more 
restless form of feverish delirium and nervous agita- 
tion, and others in the fixed forms of tempestuous ma- 
nia, raving frenzy, or moping idiocy. Two great com- 
memoi-ative monuments arose in after years to mark 
the depth and permanence of the awe — the sacred 
and reverential grief, with which all persons looked 
back upon the dread calamities attached to the year 
of the tiger — all who had either personally shared 
in those calamities and had themselves drunk from 
that cup of sorrow, or who had effectually been made 
witnesses to their results and associated with their 
relief : two great monuments ; one embodied in the 
religious solemnity, enjoined by the Dalai Lama, called 
in the Tartar language a Romanang — that is, a na- 
tional commemoration, with music the most rich and 
solemn, of all the souls who departed to the rest of 
Paradise from the afflictions of the Desert (this took 
place about six years after the arrival in China) ; 
secondly, another, more durable and more commensu- 
rate to the scale of the calamity and to the grandeur 
of this national Exodus, in the mighty columns of 
granite and brass erected by the Empei-or Kien Long 
near the banks of the Ily. These columns stand upon 

1 Cf. p. 37, note 2 ; aud the prefatory note. 

2 Cf. p. 38, text and note 1. 



78 DE QUINCE Y. 

the very margin of the stej)pes ; and they bear a short 
but emphatic inscription ^ to the following effect : — 

By the Will of God, 

Here, upon the Brink of these Deserts, 

Which from this Point begin and stretch away 

Pathless, treeless, waterless, 

For thousands of miles — and along the margins of many mighty 

Nations, 

Rested from their labours and from great afflictions, 

Under the shadow of tlie Chinese Wall, 

And by the favour' of Klen Long, God's Lieutenant upon Earth, 

The ancient Children of the Wilderness, — the Torgote Tartars — 

Flying before the wrath of the Grecian Czar, 

Wandering Sheep who had strayed away from the Celestial Empire 

in the year 1616, 

But are now mercifully gathered again, after infinite sorrow, 

Into the fold of their forgiving Shepherd. 

Hallowed be the spot forever, 

and 

Hallowed be the day — September 8, 17*71 ! 

Amen. 

1 This inscription has been slightly altered in one or two 
phrases, and particularly in adapting to the Christian era the 
Emperor's expressions for the year of the original Exodus from 
China and the retrogressive Exodus from Russia. With respect 
to the designation adopted for the Russian Emperor, either it 
is built upon some confusion between bim and the Byzantine 
Cffisars, as though the former, being of the same religion with 
the latter (and occupying in part the same longitudes, thoHgh in 
different latitudes), might be considered as his modern succes- 
sor ; or else it refers simply to the Greek form of Christianity 
professed by the Russian Emperor and Church. — De Quincey's 
Note. These columns are, of course, of De Quincey's erect- 
ing ; and the inscription is likewise entirely his. We can pardon 
this foot-note under the circumstances only by assuming that in 
these matters the opium-eater is not to be held to the accounta- 
bility of ordinary adult humanity. 



I 



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